Ant: The Definitive Guide

Ant1 RIP 2002?

So what does this mean for users of Ant1? Is it going away the day Ant2 becomes final? Not quite. Even though many of the design proposals mentioned earlier are subject to debate and change (incidentally, delaying release), one thing remains a constant in the design of Ant2: Ant1 buildfiles will not work with Ant2. Regardless, Ant1’s life support forms its basis in its wide user base. Ant1 has become fairly entrenched within many projects and products. For example, IBM’s VisualAge for Java now includes support for Ant Version 1.2 within its IDE. WebLogic 6.1 ships with the Ant 1.3 release libraries built in; all of Ant 1.3’s example documentation uses Ant for building the included examples. All of the Jakarta projects use Ant1 buildfiles, although some only work with Ant Release 1.2 (but most keep up with the latest version). Given Ant1’s current use and its sizeable inertia, it’s unlikely that Ant1 will just go away the day Ant2 becomes Version 1.0 — er, 2.0. More likely, the transition will be a slow one, if a transition takes place at all. If you’re well into the life cycle of your project, it will just not make sense to change what already works for you. Because Ant1 is open source, its support can never be taken away by some company. This book and a slew of online documentation will always exist to help you maintain projects based on Ant1.

Does this mean Ant2 is unlikely to take off? This too is doubtful since Ant is part of the Jakarta project. Many of the same ...