Ant

[Lucky Singh]

Can you explain what the Ant utility is used for? Where can I get some basic level knowledge for this?

[Kishore Dandu]

It is initially designed as a replacement for 'make' to build Java specific projects.
Overtime it has evolved to start supporting JUnit(for unit testing), XDoctlet(for EJB generation) etc.
You can look at this link for more details and downloads etc.
There is a very good book on ANT called 'Java Programming using ANT' from Manning publications.
Ant and advanced Java(J2EE etc) programming go hand in hand. It is a very good and needed skill to learn and hold on to.

[Dirk Schreckmann]

Moving this to the Ant forum...