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Apache Ant vs Pants: What are the differences?
Developers describe Apache Ant as "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. On the other hand, Pants is detailed as "Build system by Twitter, Foursquare, and Square". Pants is a build system for Java, Scala and Python. It works particularly well for a source code repository that contains many distinct projects.
Apache Ant and Pants can be categorized as "Java Build" tools.
Some of the features offered by Apache Ant are:
- 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
On the other hand, Pants provides the following key features:
- Builds Java, Scala, and Python.
- Adding support for new languages is straightforward.
- Supports code generation: thrift, protocol buffers, custom code generators.
"Flexible" is the top reason why over 3 developers like Apache Ant, while over 5 developers mention "Creates deployable packages" as the leading cause for choosing Pants.
Apache Ant and Pants are both open source tools. Pants with 1.16K GitHub stars and 333 forks on GitHub appears to be more popular than Apache Ant with 247 GitHub stars and 253 GitHub forks.
Pros of Apache Ant
- Flexible4
- Simple1
- Easy to learn1
- Easy to write own java-build-hooks1
Pros of Pants
- Creates deployable packages6
- Runs on Linux4
- Runs on OS X4
- BUILD files4
- Runs tests4
- Scales4
- Flexibility2
- Extensible2
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Cons of Apache Ant
- Slow1
- Old and not widely used anymore1