java Ant

Ant is the most commonly used "make" facility for Java programs. After editing source programs, it's necessary to recompile. Ant checks the last change date on .class and .java files and recompiles source files where the .class date is older than the corresponding .java file.

Ant also supports many additional tasks, for example, running javadoc to produce documentation, running tests, building jar files, ... The action of ant is determined by a build.xml file. A generic build.xml file is given below that might be appropriate for student programs