new ant user

[peter <pe...@btinternet.com>]

hi

i'm new to ant and am not sure what to do.  I'm playing about with struts
and finding it a real pain to keep recompiling java classes etc.  I've been
told that using ant is a nice way to develop web apps.  I'm reading the ant
manual but making slow progress, so would appreciate it if someone could
send me an example build file for a simple struts application.

Does ant automatically produce .war files, or do I have to explicitly state
that what I want produced is a .war file.

Please bear with my ignorance regarding this subject.  I am new to ant and
have never even used a makefile utility before, although I am starting to
see their usefulness.

Many thanks

Peter

Re: new ant user

[Conor MacNeill <co...@cortexebusiness.com.au>]

Peter,

peter wrote:
> Does ant automatically produce .war files, or do I have to explicitly state
> that what I want produced is a .war file.

Ant doesn't do anything automatically. You need to construct a build 
file which sets out what you want Ant to do to build your war file. It 
will usually involve compiling some code, combining the classes with 
resources into a war and even, potentially, deploying the war somewhere.

I think your best bet would be to ask on the struts user list for an 
example build file showing how struts apps are put together. That should 
get you going. If you don't have any luck there, check back here.

> 
> Please bear with my ignorance regarding this subject.  I am new to ant and
> have never even used a makefile utility before, although I am starting to
> see their usefulness.

Conor