Ant (http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/) is a build tool written in Java that
eliminates some of the deficiencies of working with the traditional make tool.
Ant is very customizable becauses of its inherent use of object-oriented design concepts.
Ant build files are defined in XML format and a very easy to use.  The build.xml
file defines various tasks to be executed, any of which can have dependencies on
other tasks.

Extensible.

Since each task is a Java class, you can easily write your own custom tasks and then just use them in the build.xml file.

Example

We want to compile Kurt's Performance Lab library.  Here are the tasks:


main --> javadoc --> jar --> compile

(--> depends on)