Here are some reviews of the book. Newest First.

2007-07-14 Bill de hÓra The definitive guide to building Java systems,

Ant in Action is essential reading for anyone who has to set up a Java build, or manage and maintain large projects.

I've been waiting for this to leave the printers for a while - I was lucky enough to read a pre-release copy of Ant in Action, and I can't recommend it highly enough. It carefully walks through the setup for a basic build system, and evolves that to managing large scale projects, explaining as it goes how modern versions of Ant and its features (such as macrodef and import) work to handle larger and larger codebases. It's a hugely detailed, but well written book.

The title doesn't do justice to the material covered. Ant in Action is also a catalog of best practices for building, testing and deploying Java systems - I don't think there's another book in print that provides the kind of information you can find here. Dependency management, source layout, testing, master builds, packaging, deployment, web development - it's all there.

2007-07-11 Stephane Balliez

As you can expect from Steve (Loughran), it's a thorough description of every bit and pieces that can be automated as part of your build with clear practical examples. Besides Ant, it drives you through the use of Ivy to manage dependencies and SmartFrog to handle deployment.

The book alone is worth it for those chapters and it should be the companion book to every engineer in the java world from my point of view.

Now I wish Steve would do an entire book about deployment with SmartFrog: 'SmartFrog in Action' and gives lots of details on how they use it at their HP datacenters (hint hint)

Steve Says: I have no plans to write a book on deployment. We may make some videos instead. Question is, why are all the Joost people so in need of a book on the topic? Is there some kind of deployment problem there?

2007-05-29 Julian Simpson

This book will change your deployments ... It's worth buying the book for Chapter 16 alone.

2007-04-16 Tim O'Brian Upcoming Book: Ant in Action

Steve Loughran's Ant in Action is an upcoming book to pay attention to.