Create a Build Environment
Having a build environment for your application is very important. Even if you use a sophisticated integrated development environment (IDE) for your development that can create EJB JARs and WAR files, a proper build environment will pay off in the long run.
The biggest benefit is that you will have total control over the structure of the produced files. It will also be very easy to produce WAR files, or a separate component, without having to run the IDE every time a change in the code is made. The most obvious benefit is that you won’t have to depend on a particular IDE and its features for your builds.
A commonly used open source tool for making build environments is Ant. It’s written in Java and is easily customizable for any task. Ant can effortlessly compile and package Java code, and make different J2EE archives. Writing Ant build files, which are XML files, if fairly simple, even for J2EE applications.
I won’t go into the details of writing Ant build files because that is a very large topic, but you can find a lot of information about this process on the official Ant site at http://jakarta.apache.org/ant/index.html.