Working with Ant

Apache Ant is a Java-based build tool. It is used to standardize and automate build and run environments for development. In other words, it ensures the software in your development project is built in exactly the same manner each time a build is executed, independent of the IDE.

In the Ant environment, a build file with an .xml extension, specifies a number of named targets, such as clean, dist, or compile. Those targets include a series of actions that apply to the development hierarchy tree.

Hint: A target is a set of executable tasks, or task elements.

For more information:
http://ant.apache.org/