Apache Ant – Automation Build tool

Ant (“Another Neat Tool”)
Apache Ant is a Java library and command-line tool whose mission is to drive processes described in
build files as targets and extension points dependent upon each other.

The main known usage of Ant is the build of Java applications. Ant supplies a number of built-in tasks allowing to compile, assemble, test and run Java applications.
Ant can also be used effectively to build non Java applications, for instance C or C++ applications.

More generally, Ant can be used to pilot any type of process which can be described in terms of targets and tasks.

it was conceived by “James Duncan Davidson” while preparing Sun’s reference JSP/Servlet engine, later Apache Tomcat, for release as open source.

The most immediately noticeable difference between Ant and Make is that Ant uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies,
whereas Make uses Makefile format. By default the XML file is named build.xml.

Ant 1.1 was officially released as a stand-alone product on July 19, 2000.