Intro

Ant is designed primarily for building Java projects, but that's not its only use.
It is helpful for other tasks, such as performing filesystem operations in a cross-platform way.
As an application's build process becomes more complex, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that precisely the same build steps are carried out during each build, with as much automation as possible, in order to produce consistent builds in a timely manner.
Ant is similar to make in that it defines dependencies between build tasks; however, instead of implementing build tasks using platform-specific shell commands, it uses cross-platform Java classes. With Ant, you can write a single build file that operates consistently on any Java platform (as Ant itself is implemented in the Java language); this is Ant's greatest strength.

Ant