StackShareStackShare
Follow on
StackShare

Discover and share technology stacks from companies around the world.

Follow on

© 2025 StackShare. All rights reserved.

Product

  • Stacks
  • Tools
  • Feed

Company

  • About
  • Contact

Legal

  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Service
  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Java Build Tools
  5. Apache Ant vs LiveReload

Apache Ant vs LiveReload

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Apache Ant
Apache Ant
Stacks250
Followers151
Votes7
GitHub Stars449
Forks449
LiveReload
LiveReload
Stacks653
Followers70
Votes8
GitHub Stars1.4K
Forks164

Apache Ant vs LiveReload: 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 LiveReload? CSS edits and image changes apply live. CoffeeScript, SASS, LESS and others just work. LiveReload monitors changes in the file system. As soon as you save a file, it is preprocessed as needed, and the browser is refreshed.

Apache Ant can be classified as a tool in the "Java Build Tools" category, while LiveReload is grouped under "Live Reloading".

"Flexible" is the primary reason why developers consider Apache Ant over the competitors, whereas "Lightweight, Gulp support" was stated as the key factor in picking LiveReload.

Apache Ant and LiveReload are both open source tools. LiveReload with 1.43K GitHub stars and 180 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Apache Ant with 247 GitHub stars and 254 GitHub forks.

LinkedIn, Webedia, and Atmel are some of the popular companies that use Apache Ant, whereas LiveReload is used by Startae, Listium, and Contratobook. Apache Ant has a broader approval, being mentioned in 24 company stacks & 12 developers stacks; compared to LiveReload, which is listed in 5 company stacks and 8 developer stacks.

Share your Stack

Help developers discover the tools you use. Get visibility for your team's tech choices and contribute to the community's knowledge.

View Docs
CLI (Node.js)
or
Manual

Detailed Comparison

Apache Ant
Apache Ant
LiveReload
LiveReload

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.

LiveReload monitors changes in the file system. As soon as you save a file, it is preprocessed as needed, and the browser is refreshed.

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
449
GitHub Stars
1.4K
GitHub Forks
449
GitHub Forks
164
Stacks
250
Stacks
653
Followers
151
Followers
70
Votes
7
Votes
8
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 4
    Flexible
  • 1
    Easy to learn
  • 1
    Simple
  • 1
    Easy to write own java-build-hooks
Cons
  • 1
    Old and not widely used anymore
  • 1
    Slow
Pros
  • 4
    Lightweight, Gulp support
  • 2
    Reliable
  • 1
    Stable in Chrome
  • 1
    More stable on windows

What are some alternatives to Apache Ant, LiveReload?

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.

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.

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.

Pants

Pants

Pants is a build system for Java, Scala and Python. It works particularly well for a source code repository that contains many distinct projects.

CodeKit

CodeKit

Process Less, Sass, Stylus, Jade, Haml, Slim, CoffeeScript, Javascript, and Compass files automatically each time you save. Easily set options for each language.

Prepros

Prepros

It is an interface tool which handles pre-processing, and other front-end tasks. Its greatest strength is the incredible ease with which it allows you to use pre-processors of various kinds, be they for CSS, HTML or JavaScript.

JitPack

JitPack

JitPack is an easy to use package repository for Gradle/Sbt and Maven projects. We build GitHub projects on demand and provides ready-to-use packages.

SBT

SBT

It is similar to Java's Maven and Ant. Its main features are: Native support for compiling Scala code and integrating with many Scala test frameworks.

Buck

Buck

Buck encourages the creation of small, reusable modules consisting of code and resources, and supports a variety of languages on many platforms.

Please

Please

Please is a cross-language build system with an emphasis on high performance, extensibility and reproduceability. It supports a number of popular languages and can automate nearly any aspect of your build process.

Related Comparisons

GitHub
Bitbucket

Bitbucket vs GitHub vs GitLab

GitHub
Bitbucket

AWS CodeCommit vs Bitbucket vs GitHub

Kubernetes
Rancher

Docker Swarm vs Kubernetes vs Rancher

gulp
Grunt

Grunt vs Webpack vs gulp

Graphite
Kibana

Grafana vs Graphite vs Kibana