Ant Developer’s Handbook

A Standard Build Environment

Although doing so isn’t necessary, it makes sense to develop the application in a project directory that uses a physical layout that everyone agrees on. The layout that most Java developers should be most familiar with is the layout on which the JDK distribution is based. That layout forms the basis for the standard build environment described here.

Note

As my colleagues Mike Boni and Jason Rosso have independently stated, it’s best to stick to what’s familiar to most developers, otherwise known as the “path of least surprise.”

The outermost directory should be named after the end product. For the sample project, the outermost directory is chatroom. It is in this directory that we’ll drop in the classes, src,