ROXES Antony - Run Ant make files with a User Interface
Author:	lars gersmann
Homepage:	http://www.roxes.com/produkte/antony
Version:	1.2 (2004-01-30)
Abstract:	ROXES Antony is a Application for executing Ant make files visually. ROXES Antony is a based Software giving developers the ability to create full fledged setup and wizard software using .

Table of contents

51. Introduction

51.1. What is it good for ?

Antony was developed to give developers the ability to provide a graphical user interface for build processes.

The software can be used to create visual setup's or wizards based on pure build files.

52. Requirements

Antony was developed for JAVA 1.4 or higher.

When using the <javac> task or any other task using the JDK functionality you need to have an installed JDK. Otherwise only a JAVA Runtime Environment is required.

53. Features

Ant Compatibility

Antony is 100% compatible. We didn't reimplement instead is integrated. This fact brings developers 100% compatibility when using Antony.

Comandline interface

Antony can be configured by commandline. The commandline interface is 100% compatible to 's commandline interface. Therefore there is no change for your configuration except calling Antony instead on the commandline.

There are additional commandline options to configure Antony's style and behaviour. You can modifiy the title, icon and auto start/exit behaviour (See Commandline Options for details).

Graphical <input> and <echo> task Visualization

The <input> and <echo> tasks are used to get user input and provide informations to the user. Antony provides custom implementations allowing to display these tasks graphically.

The <echo> task echoes text using a dialog. Multiline text exceeding a limit will be displayed in a scrollable text pane dialog. The <echo> dialog image depends on the used <echo> level.
sample echo dialog

The <input> task can take user input for further processing in Ant. The task will be displayed using a dialog. If the prompt is multiline text exceeding a limit it will be displayed in a scrollable pane. Predefined input values will be displayed as combo box.

small multi line prompt

large multi line prompt

single line prompt and validargs

Graphical build progress visualization

Antony tracks the build progress visually by displaying all targets done, current target and the current processing task.
sample build progress

Syntax colored output shell

Antony comes with a output shell utilizing syntax coloring for the different Ant output level. The output shell can be configured to be visible at startup. At runtime the output shell can be triggered to be visible too.
console in action

Native wrapped Antony executables

The distribution contains both pure java and native wrapped executables of Antony for Windows and most Unix compliant systems. The executables include Ant 1.5.4, ROXES Ant Tasks and Antony itself. You need nothing more than writing your Ant build file.

The native windows and unix executables where created using ROXES Ant Tasks.

Builtin Ant task's for creating OS specific Setup's

Antony is distributed with ROXES Ant Tasks. ROXES Ant Tasks includes many platform specific Ant tasks for Windows and Unix systems. ROXES Ant Tasks where developed to make desktop integration for multile platforms possible during Ant build files. Included are tasks for Windows Shortcut creation, KDE shortcut creation, OS specific special directory access (Desktop directory for example), Windows Registry access, Windows native executable creation, Unix executable creation and many many more.

See ROXES Ant Tasks for usage and details.

54. Commandline Options

Antony is executed in the same manner as Ant. Simply call

java -jar roxes-ant-tasks-1.2-2004-01-30.jar com.roxes.tools.ant.antony.Antony [args...]

Antony provides the same commandline options like Ant. Antony provides some additional commandline parameters to configure the style and behaviour of the application. Antony specific commandline options Option Description -autostart If defined the build process starts immediately after starting Antony. By default Antony starts the build process when the user pressed the start button. -autoexit If defined the Antony exits immediately after finishing the build process. If an error occures while processing the build file the application don't exit automatically. The user have to press the abort button automatically. By default Antony exits when the user pressed the quit/abort button. -title [title] The text to display in the title bar and the name attribute of the project element. By default the Antony titlebar display's Antony [build-name] where build-name is the name attribute of the project element. -icon [icon] The icon of the Antony window. By default Antony displays its own icon. -console If defined the console window will be opened automatically. The console window shows the Ant's build output syntax colored. By default Antony does not display the console window automatically. But it can be opened manually.

Antony commandline options