The heart of Extreme Programming (and many other lightweight development processes) is iteration: constant new builds, and continuous feedback. This virtually demands the automation of build, testing, and deployment processes. One tool makes this especially easy: Apache Ant. Now there’s a complete guide to using Ant with lightweight methodologies.
Extreme Programming with Ant presents a book-length case study covering the entire development lifecycle. You’ll first define a complete set of build, testing, and deployment processes that’ll work in many (though not all) projects and environments. These include everything from automatic generation of documentation, to unit testing and version control, and nightly builds that encompass revision control, compiles, unit tests, reports, even metrics. The authors show how to integrate the CruiseControl tool for unattended continuous builds; then turn to deployment -- including tools that can automatically create deployment descriptors for web apps, EJBs, JSPs, and taglibs.
You’ll learn how to scale your project’s build processes as your project grows, and how to deploy your XP/Ant processes enterprise wide. There’s a full chapter on using Ant and XP in commercial development environments: for example, how to obfuscate JARs so they can’t be reengineered. There’s even coverage of changing your processes to reflect a company reorganization.
The authors never shy away from details. You’ll find Ant 1.5.3 XML buildfiles, as well as Java code for extending Ant, and guidance on integrating third-party tools. Among the tasks you’ll master here: detecting missing unit tests, creating UML diagrams during a build, integrating Oracle SQL*Loader, even creating custom loggers that encrypt email for delivery over unsecured networks. Bill Camarda
Bill Camarda is a consultant, writer, and web/multimedia content developer. His 15 books include Special Edition Using Word 2000 and Upgrading & Fixing Networks for Dummies, Second Edition.