Apache Ant Projects

Apache Ant uses XML to write buildfiles and each buildfile contains one project and at least one default target. Target is a container of tasks and each task is a code that can be executed. We can understand to a project as a container that wraps targets and tasks into a single unit. To create a project, we can use <project> tag. For example, a project tag would look like below:

<project name="java-ant project" default="run">
	...
</project>

And it comprises both target and tasks too. So can be written as:

<project name="java-ant project" default="run">
	<target name="run" depends="compile">
		<task-name></task-name>
	</target>
	<target name="compile">
		<task-name></task-name>
	</target>
</project>

Project tag uses various attributes to set the name and target to run. The most commonly used attributes are given below.

Apache Ant Project Attributes

Attribute	Description	Required
name	It is a name of the project	No
default	It is used to set default target if no target is supplied explicitly.	No
basedir	It requires base directory path	No