Meister's Build Management and Apache Ant 

OpenMake Meister leverages the power of Ant through Build Services and methods.  Developers who are accustomed to using Ant to write build.xml scripts will be able to write re-usable Ant Build scripts using the Meister Build methods.  Once written, the Build Method can be used by developers across the java development enterprise creating a level of agility not normally found in ad hoc Ant scripts. 

The use of Ant within the Meister Build Services provides two distinct advantages:

1. Ant is well established as a "front-end" to Java compiles, and is well understood by Java Developers. Using Ant with Meister allows for dynamic builds using a common framework.
2. The developer only has to learn one set of options for Java compiles: the Ant options. These options will be configured globally in the Build Methods, or locally in the Target Definition File.

Ant serves as an important tool for building Java components.  OpenMake Meister integrates with Ant, allowing our users to define Build Methods that call Ant Tasks.  Using Build Methods also allows our users to define build best practices around the usage of Ant.  Below are a list of the Build Methods using Ant Tasks that are provided "out of the box".  Of course, you can write your own Build Methods as you see fit.

Look for support of generating IVY dependency files in our 7.2 release.  Meister understands the dependencies without needing a developer to manually create the IVY files.  7.2 will support the creation of IVY files so that they can be read by IVY.