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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Continuous Deployment
  4. Server Configuration And Automation
  5. Apache Ant vs Fabric

Apache Ant vs Fabric

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Fabric
Fabric
Stacks494
Followers307
Votes75
GitHub Stars15.3K
Forks2.0K
Apache Ant
Apache Ant
Stacks250
Followers151
Votes7
GitHub Stars449
Forks449

Apache Ant vs Fabric: What are the differences?

What is Apache Ant? Java based build tool. Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like Make, without Make's wrinkles and with the full portability of pure Java code.

What is Fabric? Simple, Pythonic remote execution and deployment. Fabric is a Python (2.5-2.7) library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks It provides a basic suite of operations for executing local or remote shell commands (normally or via sudo) and uploading/downloading files, as well as auxiliary functionality such as prompting the running user for input, or aborting execution..

Apache Ant belongs to "Java Build Tools" category of the tech stack, while Fabric can be primarily classified under "Server Configuration and Automation".

"Flexible" is the top reason why over 3 developers like Apache Ant, while over 19 developers mention "Python" as the leading cause for choosing Fabric.

Apache Ant and Fabric are both open source tools. Fabric with 11.4K GitHub stars and 1.73K forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Apache Ant with 247 GitHub stars and 254 GitHub forks.

According to the StackShare community, Fabric has a broader approval, being mentioned in 147 company stacks & 38 developers stacks; compared to Apache Ant, which is listed in 24 company stacks and 12 developer stacks.

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Detailed Comparison

Fabric
Fabric
Apache Ant
Apache Ant

Fabric is a Python (2.5-2.7) library and command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks. It provides a basic suite of operations for executing local or remote shell commands (normally or via sudo) and uploading/downloading files, as well as auxiliary functionality such as prompting the running user for input, or aborting execution.

Ant is a Java-based build tool. In theory, it is kind of like Make, without Make's wrinkles and with the full portability of pure Java code.

Lets you execute arbitrary Python functions via the command line;Library of subroutines (built on top of a lower-level library) to make executing shell commands over SSH easy and Pythonic
The most complete Java build and deployment tool available.;Platform neutral and can handle platform specific properties such as file separators;Can be used to perform platform specific tasks such as modifying the modified time of a file using 'touch' command;Scripts are written using plain XML. If you are already familiar with XML, you can learn pretty quickly;Automate complicated repetitive tasks;Interface to develop custom tasks;Can be easily invoked from the command line and it can integrate with free and commercial IDEs
Statistics
GitHub Stars
15.3K
GitHub Stars
449
GitHub Forks
2.0K
GitHub Forks
449
Stacks
494
Stacks
250
Followers
307
Followers
151
Votes
75
Votes
7
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 23
    Python
  • 21
    Simple
  • 5
    Low learning curve, from bash script to Python power
  • 5
    Installation feedback for Twitter App Cards
  • 3
    Easy on maintainance
Pros
  • 4
    Flexible
  • 1
    Easy to write own java-build-hooks
  • 1
    Easy to learn
  • 1
    Simple
Cons
  • 1
    Old and not widely used anymore
  • 1
    Slow

What are some alternatives to Fabric, Apache Ant?

Ansible

Ansible

Ansible is an IT automation tool. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate more advanced IT tasks such as continuous deployments or zero downtime rolling updates. Ansible’s goals are foremost those of simplicity and maximum ease of use.

Apache Maven

Apache Maven

Maven allows a project to build using its project object model (POM) and a set of plugins that are shared by all projects using Maven, providing a uniform build system. Once you familiarize yourself with how one Maven project builds you automatically know how all Maven projects build saving you immense amounts of time when trying to navigate many projects.

Chef

Chef

Chef enables you to manage and scale cloud infrastructure with no downtime or interruptions. Freely move applications and configurations from one cloud to another. Chef is integrated with all major cloud providers including Amazon EC2, VMWare, IBM Smartcloud, Rackspace, OpenStack, Windows Azure, HP Cloud, Google Compute Engine, Joyent Cloud and others.

Terraform

Terraform

With Terraform, you describe your complete infrastructure as code, even as it spans multiple service providers. Your servers may come from AWS, your DNS may come from CloudFlare, and your database may come from Heroku. Terraform will build all these resources across all these providers in parallel.

Gradle

Gradle

Gradle is a build tool with a focus on build automation and support for multi-language development. If you are building, testing, publishing, and deploying software on any platform, Gradle offers a flexible model that can support the entire development lifecycle from compiling and packaging code to publishing web sites.

Capistrano

Capistrano

Capistrano is a remote server automation tool. It supports the scripting and execution of arbitrary tasks, and includes a set of sane-default deployment workflows.

Puppet Labs

Puppet Labs

Puppet is an automated administrative engine for your Linux, Unix, and Windows systems and performs administrative tasks (such as adding users, installing packages, and updating server configurations) based on a centralized specification.

Salt

Salt

Salt is a new approach to infrastructure management. Easy enough to get running in minutes, scalable enough to manage tens of thousands of servers, and fast enough to communicate with them in seconds. Salt delivers a dynamic communication bus for infrastructures that can be used for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management and much more.

Bazel

Bazel

Bazel is a build tool that builds code quickly and reliably. It is used to build the majority of Google's software, and thus it has been designed to handle build problems present in Google's development environment.

AWS OpsWorks

AWS OpsWorks

Start from templates for common technologies like Ruby, Node.JS, PHP, and Java, or build your own using Chef recipes to install software packages and perform any task that you can script. AWS OpsWorks can scale your application using automatic load-based or time-based scaling and maintain the health of your application by detecting failed instances and replacing them. You have full control of deployments and automation of each component

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