AntInstaller 7.0.1beta review

AntInstaller is a simple front end for Ant

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: teknopaul

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AntInstaller is a simple front end for Ant. Developers can create ant scripts for deployment on any system that supports Java and provide a simple user friendly interface for editing the properties of the installation.

A simple case might be to ask the user for an installation directory, let them select which components to install (product, plugins, source code, documentation) and then unpack the installation files to the correct place.

AntInstall starts to provide more benfit when the installation process takes input from the users and sets the values into the correct properties files for the application. For example when installing a webapp the install could unjar the war file and then use "Ant replace" to place user selcted properties into the WEB-INF/web.xml file with out the user having to edit the xml file directly.

The full power of Ant and all plugins is available to the install process.

Installation

If installing from the self extracting jar, the first thing is to extract the whole Jar to a temporary directory
AntInstaller then checks to see if windows can be run or if it should use the text/console UI
Either the Swing GUI or text UI is launched , the user fills in the required propertys and/or selects from the options. Properties will be collected and a list of targets to run will be made.
AntInstaller writes out the properties selected in file in the current directory (or the temporary directory if loading from the self extracting jar)
Ant is automatically launched and looks for the build.xml file in the current directory(or the temporary directory). The properties are passed to Ant.
The Ant targets selected previously are then run in order, potentially re-running tasks if you have depends. (not recommended)
The Progress page allows users in the GUI to view or ignore the Ant output. The text console will have all the ant output shown
Assuming no exceptions, the app can then be exited