Ant: The Definitive Guide

Rating:
Summary: Yes a useless one
Review: 1. Most of it are just taken from online docs
2. It does not deal with any of the advanced stuff like dependency management etc. ( part of it could be due to the old version of ant used )
3. The worst part is that, it is not very friendly for a user. 80% os the book is dedicated to showing the java APIs used to implement ant ( that too like a cut paste manner ), rather than showing the xml syntax that a user will use.

Yes its a waste. Buy the Erik Hatcher, Steve Loughran book which is the only good one available.

Rating:
Summary: A must read for anyone using or starting with ANT
Review: Ant: The Definitive Guide is just that - A great tutorial on ANT that will have you up and running with Ant in just a few minutes. I have been an Ant user for about 8 months now, but I still found a lot of very interesting things in this book. The book starts up with an introduction to Ant and builds into a complete tutorial where the reader will learn everything he/she needs to write build scripts using Ant.

I really liked the chapters on user written tasks and listeners which allow you to extend Ant to do what you need it to do. The book also includes a detailed section where all of the core and optional tasks are described in details with a usage example for most of the tasks.

If you are using Ant or want to start using Ant, this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: The Definitive 'Waste of Money'
Review: Considering all the Ant build possibilities, this book barely scratches the service. Half the book is nothing more than the API in alphabetical order. I would have liked to see examples that incorporated the optional Ant jar (JUnit), complex EJB builds, deployment on 3rd party application servers like Weblogic, and strategies dealing with multiple wars but these were no where to be found. It would have been nice if there was more discussion on best practices. In addition, the book is poorly written and reads like it was written overnight.

This book should be titled "An introduction to Ant and nothing more." I only wished that I saved my receipt. Go read 'Java Development With Ant'. It is far more comprehensive and 'Definitive'. At first I gave this book 2 stars but after reviewing 'Java Development With Ant' I realized this book was more lacking than I thought. Don't make the same mistake I did!

Rating:
Summary: Use as an introduction or a desktop reference
Review: For the moment, let's ignore the fact that ant comes with a comprehensive manual.

The book gives a nice overview and motivation for ant, as well as a sample project which will help you get up to speed quickly. There is a comprehensive chapter on data types and a nice example of how to build your own task.

I was happy to see that O'Reilly editing quality remains high which sets it apart from other publishers.

The only complaint I had when I first read the book is that I thought that the codes given to the various task parameters in the task reference were a bit cryptic. The book also mentioned that ant 2.0 was due out in 2002, but here it is 2004 and I only see 1.6. The book also provides installation directions, which should really be an appendix since most folks probably just install the RPM or .deb these days.

But ant does come with an excellent manual, which is up-to-date.

It does appear that the book is not too much more than a cover for this documentation. Unlike the book, the task reference in the bundled manual organizes the tasks by function, which is useful. The list of parameters for each task is better organized: it is in a table, it eschews the ant version for the parameter, and there is a Required column (instead of a cryptic code as in the book).

I'd recommend that you borrow or read this book on safari.oreilly.com for a nice introduction and then use the bundled manual for more examples and a reference.

Rating:
Summary: Please Avoid such Duds
Review: I don't have much experience with O'reilly books. All I reffered was Prog C# which I found good. I have a friend who has this book. And fortunately, I got a good advice to not to buy this book. A better approach, I was told and have used, would be to download Ant and read the Documentation. Another would be to go for some other publisher( I heard Wrox has a good title on this, but I dont know the name)(I got this feedback from at least 3 People).Please spare us such duds in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Great book if your NEW to Ant.
Review: I really scratch my heads these days on the book reviews hence I'm writing this one. I have this book AND the Manning Ant book.

This book does a great job of teaching you basic fundamentals and how the pieces work. So as an example the other book which is over 600 pages talks about DataTypes BEFORE talking about properties. This book talks about properties FIRST which is a much better progession of complexity IMHO.

This book has some typos. There was also a typo in the Apendix B on how to create a super zip jar of your open source lib jars. This example does not work nor can I find anything on the publisher's site with a fix. :-(

I can understand mistakes but I'm not a big fan of people being lazy or not supporting their web site with current updates. To help further this point the errate site last changed on 7/21/04 an today is 2/8/05 with no clue how to fix the busted example on page 254.

This book I would recomend as an intro or if you just have a small project you want to use Ant for. If your doing J2EE work with things like ejbdoclet the Manning book is a great reference. Don't expect the Manning book to be a good intro. Ironically the Manning book STATES in chapter 3 where they introduce the key concepts that it CAN NOT be digested in one reading.

So basically treat this book as a good salad an the other one as a steak dinner. There are a LOT of folks who really only want a salad for dinner. :-)

Also the salad is about 1/3 of the pages of the steak dinner so if you have to carry one around the salad will fit easier in a book bag. :-)

BTW

I'm not associated with either authors or publishers. I am a software developer by trade and got assigned to fix a year old Ant build that was over 800 lines of text. This book helped me get started down the right path while the Manning book filled in the outer edges. I also managed to reduce our build file down to a little over 100 lines plus it now WORKS but enough about me. :-)

I would recomend it plus I would have given it a 5 star had the publisher shown better diligence on updating the supporting web site.



Rating:
Summary: What a shame
Review: Its a shame, but this book is a real piece of junk. I don't know how long it took the authors to write, but it reads like it was thrown together in a frantic hurry. It also covers an older (1.4.x) version of Ant. Even worse a lot of this information is available from the Ant docs. To be fair this book does give you the basic information about how to use Ant, but it is far from a "definitive guide." Hatcher's book is much better even though its published by Manning.

Rating:
Summary: Good Introduction
Review: This book is good to get you running quickly on the most often used features of Ant. A few more examples would have been nice.

Rating:
Summary: great book - needs a little better reference section
Review: this is a great book for getting your knowledge past the basics in ant, but i don't think it is the best reference. use this book to learn ant and use online help for reference.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Tutorial
Review: When it comes to open source technology, you're on your own as soon as you download and install the product. The most challenging part has to be figuring out how to configure your new toy. There is always that infamous README file, but let's face it, it does not get us as far as we would like to go. Lucky for all of us beginners to Ant, it is self-explanatory, and easy to work with. Not only that, but there are countless examples available on the web, and the book to get us started.

Reading "Ant, The Definitive Guide" by Jesse Tilly & Eric M. Burke, is like having one of them beside you. The book carefully walks you through the steps required to write your first buildfile. From there, more complex ideas and approaches are introduced to the entire build process. Naturally, one should be well adapted to the Unix/DOS command line before jumping into the book. Trying to do it any other way is not as obvious.

The authors build structure is straightforward. First, there is the standard directory structure of BIN/DOC/LIB, and so forth. This consistency with the rest of the industries makes learning the process that much easier. With changes constantly taking place in programming environments, having a buildfile to generate your executables and keeping your documentation up-to-date is quite nice. I started with the authors' samples, and have modified them to fit my working environment. In doing so, I am keeping to the standards in used by the Java community, and I know that is a great plus down the road.

The book is well organized and very intuitive. For the starting Java programmer, this is a tool that will get you far. Don't forget that documentation is key to good programming, and it will save you down the road when you have to figure out what's going on with that line of code.

Unfortunately, there isn't much involved in building an Ant file. Once you have the necessary components in place, it is a matter of renaming them for your next project. The book is short, and it covers enough to get you where you need to be. One half of the book is dedicated to various parameters that can be incorporated into your buildfile. This is handy, but for the beginners, it can be overwhelming. For the most part, you can obtain the instructions provided in the first half of the book by searching the web, but you won't have the step-by-step guidance that is provided by Tilly and Burke.