All my current Ant experiments have been done via Ant in Eclipse. Today I decided to actually download the ‘normal’ version.

Looking through the files I found “ant_in_anger.html“.

This document contains some strategies and tactics for making the most of Ant. It is moderately frivolous in places, and lacks almost any actual examples of Ant XML. The lack of examples is entirely deliberate – it keeps document maintenance costs down. Most of the concepts covered don’t need the detail provided by XML representations, as it is the processes we are concerned about, not the syntax. Finally, please be aware that the comments here are only suggestions which need to be customised to meet your own needs, not strict rules about what should and should not be done.

If you are getting started with Ant – I’d recommend adding this to your bookmarks!