SECTION 5 Automate Tasks with Ant

Tip 43: Customize the Build Process

The IDE utilizes Ant as its primary project engine: Every time you build a project, the IDE executes an Ant script. Similar to GNU make, Ant is a tool for automating the build process. Like make, Ant handles build dependencies, but unlike make, Ant is platform- and shell-independent.

The NetBeans IDE and Ant can help you automate a lot of tasks that you may be doing manually. To extend the build process, you modify the Ant script: Ant scripts are written in human-readable XML, allowing you to customize the automated build process easily.

The Ant script is stored in the build.xml file in the main directory of the project. You customize the build process by overriding empty ...

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