Apache Ant Downloads

Apache Ant was designed to be a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like make, without make's wrinkles.

Why another build tool when there is already make, gnumake, nmake, jam, and others? Because all those tools have limitations that Ant's original author couldn't live with when developing software across multiple platforms.

Make-like tools are inherently shell-based: they evaluate a set of dependencies, then execute commands not unlike what you would issue on a shell. This means that you can easily extend these tools by using or writing any program for the OS that you are working on; however, this also means that you limit yourself to the OS, or at least the OS type, such as Unix, that you are working on.

Makefiles are inherently evil as well. Anybody who has worked on them for any time has run into the dreaded tab problem. "Is my command not executing because I have a space in front of my tab?!!" ...