Ant buildfiles as project builders

Our second practical example of using Ant buildfiles in Eclipse is a 'project builder'. This is an Ant buildfile that has been designated to run whenever a project is built. The uses for such a buildfile are many:

For this example, we will create an Ant buildfile that creates a .jar archive of the class files in a project. Note that this is similar to the example in the last chapter, in which we used an Ant buildfile to generate .jar files for an Eclipse plug-in. This example differs in that it works for any Eclipse project, whether or not it is also an Eclipse plug-in.

Creating Ant buildfiles
Editing Ant buildfiles
Running Ant buildfiles
Saving & Reusing Ant options
Creating a project builder Ant buildfile
Executing project builders
Project Builder Ant Targets
External tools
Non-Ant project builders
Stand-alone external tools