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Ant in Action (Manning) | 
 enlarge | Authors: Steve Loughran, Erik Hatcher
Publisher: Manning Publications
Category: Book
List Price: $49.99
Buy New: $17.48
You Save: $32.51 (65%)
New (43) Used (11) from $17.46
Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 89059
Format: Illustrated
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 600
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.2
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.2
ISBN: 193239480X
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.262
EAN: 9781932394801
ASIN: 193239480X
Publication Date: July 12, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This second edition of a Manning bestseller has been revised and re-titled to fit the 'In Action' Series by Steve Loughran, an Ant project committer. Ant in Action introduces Ant and how to use it for test-driven Java application development. Ant itself is moving to v1.7, a major revision, at the end of 2006 so the timing for the book is right. A single application of increasing complexity, followed throughout the book, shows how an application evolves and how to handle the problems of building and testing. Reviewers have praised the book's coverage of large-projects, Ant's advanced features, and the details and depth of the discussion-all unavailable elsewhere. This is a major revision with the second half of the book completely new, including:
How to Manage Big projects Library management Enterprise Java Continuous integration Deployment Writing new Ant tasks and datatypes
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 very usefull reference for web developers as well November 7, 2008
I began using Ant as part of my build process for Joomla! (CMS) development to save time on building, debugging, and deploying new Joomla extensions. While Ant and "Ant in Action" are geared toward helping a developer with a Java project it was also very useful for PHP web development. It contained great code examples and covers all of the useful ways one can use ant (many of which people are un-aware of).
creating a good build process March 30, 2008
"Ant in Action" is really the second edition of "Java Development in Ant." I think the original title was more descriptive as the book focuses more on process, tools and techniques than most Ant books. For example, they introduce continuous integration and why you would want to write unit tests. Not that the Ant coverage isn't good - it's excellent - just that the book is so much more. The book assumes you know Java, but walks you through everything else.
Like most Ant books the authors don't rehash the excellent online manual and API. For those new to Ant, features are clearly described with good examples and good descriptions of "what happens if ____." The flow diagrams helped visualize concepts nicely.
For those who have been using Ant, there are margin notes about what was added in 1.6/1.7 along with coverage of Ivy. I also liked the Java 6/JEE 5 examples. The techniques for writing reusable/maintainable code and extending Ant provided significant value. I was a little disappointed that the JUnit examples used JUnit 3.8. The authors did explain the reasoning and I understand their reason. I still would have liked to see it though as this book will still be used when JUnit 4 is in wider use.
Coverage of related tools is also useful. It's good to know what libraries to look into to increase productivity with Ant. I've been using Ant for complex builds for three years and still had a page of take away points from this book. I recommend it for the valuable information and techniques.
 Excellent reference so far March 10, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Being a general novice with Ant, I needed to get up to speed to amateur/expert level for my new job. So far its been a great reference getting in depth information about lesser used tasks in Ant.
Since I work on a large scale project here, Chapter 10, Working with Big Projects has really been the most useful for me. Overall, I would say this book fits my needs and doesn't require me to buy any additional Ant books at this time. I would recommend it to others in similar situations.
Very thorough update to a classic! October 8, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Boy, was this new version that covers version 1.7 needed! Manning's first version was 2003 (Own it, too), and it was really starting to show its age. This book was, and still is, the only game in town. Its therefore a good thing it is written so well!
So why 4 stars? I really, really, wanted a thorough treatment of the Ant API, and didn't get it. I selfishly want to call Ant from within Java code, but the section on Embedding only had a very simplistic example using echo().
I also have to give 4 stars because as the only book out there on Ant (at this level), there is nothing to compare it to.
The best and most complete book on Apache Ant August 17, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a build tool, Apache Ant has been in existence for quite a while now and remains the number one Java build scripting tool. A large number of books have been written on its implementation - both good and unfortunately bad - and here is a brand new one which covers Ant 1.7.
This book is a retitled second edition of Java Development with Ant by the same authors but is not just a minor update - the back cover quotes 50% new content and I can well believe it. Personally, I have implemented lots of build processes using Ant and even written a book on its implementation myself. I therefore thought I knew most things about the tool - however I was pleasantly surprised that I still managed to learn some new things from this book.
In general I don't really like books over 250-300 pages - and this one stretches over 560 pages. Although there is probably some content that could have been left out, there are also gems such as Managing Dependencies with Apache Ivy (although I prefer the Ant tasks for Maven), Working with XML and Automating Deployment using a tool called SmartFrog. For me these chapters made the purchase of the book worthwhile.
If you are new or have limited experience of Ant then you should add an extra star to my rating. I believe this is probably the most complete book at taking you from an Ant novice to expert, in as short a time as possible.
It would have been nice to see some more examples of how Ant can be integrated into automated build processes, and rather strangely the book uses Luntbuild as an example rather that the more popular CruiseControl tool. Also it would have been nice to see how Ant can work alongside commercial tools such as the Build Forge build/release framework, application servers such as Weblogic or WebSphere and deployment tools developed by the likes of Tivoli or Microsoft. On the whole however, these are relatively minor complaints.
In summary, if you are new to Ant then buy this book now. If you are an experienced Ant user then well, still buy this book!
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