Ant is a bit of a mystery bag. Its behavior is often obscure until you come to look at its code. Then you find that it consists of a number of fairly simple facilities that are often explained from a bottom-up detailed and technical viewpoint and not from a top-down architectural perspective. This article aims to provide the missing top-down view. It is targeted at an audience of software engineers. Armed with this article, and some solid opinions on when and when not to use this tool, you should be able to find your way in the anthill.
Ant History, Legacy, and Impact
If you have never heard of Ant, don't worry. Ant is yet ANother Tool in the realm of building software. It was the first attempt at a build tool for Java. When it was conceived, XML was all the rage, and C was the way to express software that Java mimicked. Consequently, Ant was influenced by the thinking of C's make tool. Combining these two trends, Ant is a curious hybrid that does not have make's terseness or stringent reproducibility but does have XMLs verbose syntax. Talk about the best of both worlds.