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Benefit from platform-independent builds

Automate your build process with jmk or Ant

By Sanjay Mahapatra, JavaWorld.com, 08/04/00

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Ant

Ant, from the Jakarta Apache Project, is another build tool that supports platform-independent builds. Ant is also written in Java, but it uses a different approach from that used by jmk. Ant provides Java classes that represent development and file management utilities and thus avoids dependency on external programs that must have the same syntax across OS platforms. At the same time, Ant provides the facility of using external commands as needed. Ant uses the more flexible XML-based build files.

Conclusion

Large Java projects may be built on multiple OS platforms over their entire project lifecycle. Therefore, a pristine, platform-independent build process is advantageous; it avoids any unnecessary association with the platform on which the program was originally built. The jmk utility from the Free Software Foundation and Ant from the Jakarta Apache Project are two build tools that support such a process.