What is "ant"

Apache Ant is a tool used for compilation automation in software construction. It is similar to make but is written in the Java language and was initially developed to be used in projects of this language. The most apparent difference between Ant and make tools is that the former uses an XML file to describe the build (build) process and its dependencies, while make has its own file format, Makefile. By default this XML file has the name build.xml. One of the main goals of Ant is to solve make portability problems. In a Makefile (the file read by make) the actions to build the project (for example, generate an executable file) are triggered by operating system commands (or more specifically, from its shell), usually a Unix shell. Ant solves this problem through the large number of its own functionalities, which ensures that they will behave identically (in theory at least) on all platforms.