Ant introduction

From  Wikipedia:

" Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is similar to  make but is implemented using the Java language, requires the Java platform, and is best suited to building Java projects.

The most immediately noticeable difference between Ant and make is that Ant uses XML to describe the build process and its dependencies, whereas make has its Makefile format. By default the XML file is named build.xml.

InterMine and Ant

The InterMine project uses Ant for compiling code, building data models and databases and for running the data loading/integration process. You shouldn't ever have to write new Ant XML, but you will run lots of Ant targets we have already defined. These will usually compile some code, create databases or run particular Java code.

An example use is to create the tables and indexes for a new Mine in an empty Postgres database. In the <mine>/dbmodel directory we would do:

ant build-db

Whenever you use ant you can add a -v flag to get verbose output. We recommend doing this as it will give you detailed stack straces if a command fails:

> ant -v build-db

You can pass parameters from the command line using -Dparameter=value. For example, when integrating data you can pass in a particular source name:

> ant -v -Dsource=malaria-gff

Ant and the InterMine build system will ensure that all prerequisite code is compiled, the model is created and will create all tables and indexes based on the model.

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See: AntTargets, DataIntegration