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Java Development with Ant Review by Frank J. Kelly
One of my top 5 Java books
Ant is a great tool that lets you pretty much automate any process- whether Java build-related or not. This book is then THE one-and-only book to buy - it serves as a tutorial AND a reference. The author's breadth of knowledge on Ant is amazing and the examples he presents are wonderful.
The key areas I found the book very helpful on were
1) JUnit integration & report creation (using XDoclet /JUnitReport)
2) Deployment-related activities
3) Breaking out commonly used Ant targets for reuse
But there is so much more - my edition has been well thumbed
and has many yellow post-it notes for quick lookup.
Based on what I've learned in this book I've been able to quickly and easily integrate the following components into my build process
1) Checkstyle (syntax checker)
2) PMD ("bad practice" checker)
3) JUnit & Clover (code coverage)
4) JDepend (Class interdependcy reporting)
5) Javadoc
6) An automated nightly build of the code and deployment to WebSphere
I can't say enough about this book - but I would be lost without it and thus am loathe to lend it. If you use Ant or WANT to use Ant then buy this book.