ONJava has posted “Top 15 Ant Best Practices,” by Eric M. Burke. I am just taking the 15 heads for the future reference.
1. Adopt Consistent Style Conventions
2. Put build.xml in the Project Root Directory
3. Prefer a Single Buildfile
4. Provide Good Help
5. Provide a Clean Target
6. Manage Dependencies Using Ant
7. Define and Reuse Paths
8. Define Proper Target Dependencies
9. Use Properties for Configurability
10. Keep the Build Process Self-Contained
11. Use Version Control
12. Use Ant as the Least Common Denominator
13. Use zipfileset
14. Perform the Clean Build Test
15. Avoid Platform-Specific Ant Wrappers
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🙂 thnxs Piotr
I would add to it:
– Keep it as simple as possible.
– Use convension over configuration – avoid explosion of properties!
– Use macros for common tasks.
– Replace it with Maven if you can 🙂