This is a must for every Java developer

 

Ant in action 2nd Chinese version has been listed. Please stay tuned!

Internet purchase:Http://www.china-pub.com/39973

Sample free download:Http://groups.google.com/group/bvpopbook/files

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Praise for the first edition

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In general, Java Development with ant is an excellent book ...... It contains rich and valuable information and is well organized and clearly described. --Slashdot.org

If you are using ant, you must read this book. -- Rick Hightower, co-author of Java tools for eXtreme Programming

This is an indispensable piece of information about ant. -- One of the authors of Nicolas lesiecki and Java tools for eXtreme Programming

Ant is used in Java Development to control any Java application.ProgramPeople are very important. It would be nice if I could write such a book myself. -- Stuart Halloway developmentor, chief technology officer, author of component development for the Java platform

If you don't even realize the existence of these questions, Erik and Steve have already given you the answer. This book not only covers all aspects of ant, but also tells a lot of interesting stories about ant, which will only be known to those who use ant in the production environment. -- Ted neward net & JAVA writer, lecturer

This is a must for every Java developer. -- Denver Java User Group

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Translator's preface

Two years ago, I accidentally read Mr. danielanyi's book "Toyota Production method", and I found myself a complete "toolist ". Of course, I have no intention of being confused with the "pragmatic" faction in philosophy, although there are many similarities between them. The smarter the tool, the more things it can do for humans. Let's take a look at how tools (machines) work at Toyota:

"The operator is only responsible for quality assurance, and only a few are responsible for screw screwing or assembling parts. The robot has taken all of its work, even driving a small truck with materials to run on the corridor. When someone encounters a passage, they will make a beep to let you go ....... The robot attaches a rubber seal to the front of each Lexus vehicle, and the robot arm carefully copies the melted rubber around the square window ...... Every time this work is completed, it often has a little bit of rubber on its fingers, just like a bit of toothpaste left at the toothpaste tube mouth when we squeeze toothpaste on the toothbrush. At this time, the robot's fingertip will stop when it encounters a thin, almost invisible metal wire, which will scrape the hot black rubber left in the middle of the finger-everything is done so cleanly. I stare at this process ......"

This article is excerpted from Thomas Friedman's book "Lexus automobile" and "olive tree. It describes the plant situation of Toyota 1992. In Toyota's workshops, the number of machines is much larger than that of workers. If you still remember the scene in the modern age of the movie, where the body of Charlie is turning with the gear, you will feel the difference more strongly.

Tools are a role that cannot be ignored in the history of human development. Every step of human progress is accompanied by the emergence of new tools that can accomplish things that originally needed to be done by humans, thereby further releasing human freedom and wisdom.

This phenomenon also exists in the field of computer software development.

As a developer, how long do you spend every day configuring the environment and testing, releasing, and deploying software? Is the progress stuck due to a configuration problem often? To develop software, what really brings value is to write newCodeAnd add new features. However, configuration, release, and deployment of these functions are time-consuming and complex, but they are essentially repetitive work, which is a waste of time and wisdom for developers. So, why don't we give all of this work to machines and tools?

Machine time is much cheaper than developer time. This is a fact and trend. Advanced from assembly languageProgramming LanguageFrom the moment it was replaced, the wheel of history went in this direction. Today, the complexity of software and the difficulty of development have reached an unprecedented level. The composition of software systems involves the interaction between a large number of components, therefore, "encoding" accounts for a lower proportion of all development processes, and it consumes more and more energy to make various components operate normally. It is unfortunate for developers that they are using their time and wisdom in repetitive work that should have been automatically completed by machines. This is also unfortunate for projects, and the most expensive resources are not fully utilized.

Fortunately, there are already many excellent tools that can help developers complete a lot of repetitive work and are highly intelligent. Ant introduced in this book is an outstanding representative of these tools. Almost all Java developers have different understandings of ant, but most people are still at the stage of "temporarily copying a configuration file to use it when necessary. However, it is not enough to make full use of all ant functions. More importantly, ant is not enough! Ant is like a powerful engine that drives other tools to help developers complete more repetitive work. In this book, the author not only introduces ant's basic knowledge, but also studies ant's advanced features in depth. At the same time, the author also introduced JUnit, httpunit, cactus, luntbuild, smartfrog, Ivy, and so on. Only by organically combining these tools can we make full use of ant.

The publication of this translation is inseparable from the help of Mr. Cao xujian. You have given me a lot of help in my most difficult (most urgent) time. Finally, I think the following scenario is the end. This scenario is still far away for many companies, but many companies are moving forward towards it:

"Developers spend the most of their time analyzing and writing code every day, without having to worry about compilation, packaging, and deployment, which are cumbersome and cannot generate value, because these tasks can be completed automatically by machines. After a developer adds or modifies some code, the code runs all unit tests before submission, and all unit tests, regression tests, and (or) acceptance tests after submission. After the test is executed, a clear and beautiful report is generated, allowing developers to clearly understand the health status of the software. If an error occurs during the test, the build process stops automatically and notifies the developer by various means: stop the current job and immediately fix the error. Developers are happy to accept the most challenging intellectual issues every day, and the project manager is happy to see that even if employees do not work overtime, they can write excellent software ......"

In fact, this is just the beginning, there are more tools to help us complete the task, there are more automation to achieve. However, ant is definitely a starting point and a solid starting point.

Han2008.4