P. Cherryl said
At over five hundred pages in eighteen chapters this book is a comprehensive reference on all aspects of Ant, from building scripts to compile, test, package, execute and distribute an application, to advanced topics like testing and deploying database oriented enterprise Java applications. All core Ant tasks and many contributed and third party tasks are covered in considerable detail: the discussion of
Evan Fillman said
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).
Jeanne Boyarsky said
"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.
Sean J. Gildea said
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.
Bogus Exception said
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.
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