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  1. Stackups
  2. DevOps
  3. Build Automation
  4. Java Build Tools
  5. Apache Ant vs phing

Apache Ant vs phing

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Apache Ant
Apache Ant
Stacks250
Followers151
Votes7
GitHub Stars449
Forks449
phing
phing
Stacks60
Followers10
Votes0
GitHub Stars1.2K
Forks318

Apache Ant vs phing: 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 phing? A PHP project build system or build tool based on ​Apache Ant. It is not GNU make; it's a PHP project build system or build tool based on Apache Ant. You can do anything with it that you could do with a traditional build system like GNU make, and its use of simple XML build files and extensible PHP 'task' classes make it an easy-to-use and highly flexible build framework.

Apache Ant belongs to "Java Build Tools" category of the tech stack, while phing can be primarily classified under "Package Managers".

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, phing provides the following key features:

  • Simple XML buildfiles
  • Rich set of provided tasks
  • Easily extendable via PHP classes

Apache Ant and phing are both open source tools. It seems that phing with 995 GitHub stars and 299 forks on GitHub has more adoption than Apache Ant with 252 GitHub stars and 254 GitHub forks.

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Detailed Comparison

Apache Ant
Apache Ant
phing
phing

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.

It is not GNU make; it's a PHP project build system or build tool based on Apache Ant. You can do anything with it that you could do with a traditional build system like GNU make, and its use of simple XML build files and extensible PHP 'task' classes make it an easy-to-use and highly flexible build framework.

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
Simple XML buildfiles;Rich set of provided tasks;Easily extendable via PHP classes;Platform-independent: works on UNIX, Windows, Mac OSX;No required external dependencies;Built for PHP5
Statistics
GitHub Stars
449
GitHub Stars
1.2K
GitHub Forks
449
GitHub Forks
318
Stacks
250
Stacks
60
Followers
151
Followers
10
Votes
7
Votes
0
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 4
    Flexible
  • 1
    Simple
  • 1
    Easy to learn
  • 1
    Easy to write own java-build-hooks
Cons
  • 1
    Old and not widely used anymore
  • 1
    Slow
No community feedback yet
Integrations
No integrations available
PHP
PHP
phpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin

What are some alternatives to Apache Ant, phing?

Meteor

Meteor

A Meteor application is a mix of JavaScript that runs inside a client web browser, JavaScript that runs on the Meteor server inside a Node.js container, and all the supporting HTML fragments, CSS rules, and static assets.

Bower

Bower

Bower is a package manager for the web. It offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management, while exposing the package dependency model via an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack. There are no system wide dependencies, no dependencies are shared between different apps, and the dependency tree is flat.

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.

Elm

Elm

Writing HTML apps is super easy with elm-lang/html. Not only does it render extremely fast, it also quietly guides you towards well-architected code.

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.

Julia

Julia

Julia is a high-level, high-performance dynamic programming language for technical computing, with syntax that is familiar to users of other technical computing environments. It provides a sophisticated compiler, distributed parallel execution, numerical accuracy, and an extensive mathematical function library.

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.

Racket

Racket

It is a general-purpose, multi-paradigm programming language based on the Scheme dialect of Lisp. It is designed to be a platform for programming language design and implementation. It is also used for scripting, computer science education, and research.

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.

PureScript

PureScript

A small strongly typed programming language with expressive types that compiles to JavaScript, written in and inspired by Haskell.

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