> I just heard about ant and have been browsing the ant-user and it seems like alot of
>development is java.
That is true.
Ant's main focus is on building/deploying java based projects
> As I understand ant it is a replacement for make systems.
To a certain extent.
Ant is not simply "a better make".
There are things Ant does that a hard to do in make, and vice-versa.
The development team is not keen on Ant becomimg "make in java/xml", and there are
parts of make that will probably never be copied in Ant.
Ant is not a general replacement for make, it is an alternative way of building
projects, particularly those that are java based.
> So ant should handle c,c++ development.
> Is that correct?
Handle? sure.
Will it be better than make? Probably not (IMHO).
It depends on the size/structure of your C++ project.
> Does anyone have an opinion or experience using ant to build c++
> projects on NT and UNIX instead of with a traditional make system.
No experience, but my opinion is
a) Why do you want to?
make grew up as a C development tool, so it is designed to do C/C++ quite well.
What benefit do you anticipate from switching to ant?
b) I would personally use Jam/MR if I were running a purely C/C++ project, and had
free choice on the tool.
If the project is combined Java/C/C++/?? then I would have to sit down and look at
the options carefully.
Ant can handle C++ (although I'm not aware of any tasks that do so), but it has always
been targetted as
a tool for building java/web apps, so it may or may not fit your needs.
