What is build automation software (for example, Ant)?

Question

I see reference of ant a lot but I don\'t get exactly what its meant to do? from what i\'ve heard its supposed to compile your projects but can\'t i just do that by clicking Run

Answer 1

In many larger companies (and likely some smaller ones), you'll find that production code is not built by the people who developed it. Instead, the developers may check their code into a source code repository and tag it. Then they give this tag to a build team.

The build team, in a separate (clean) area - possibly on some headless server (i.e. with no GUI) - will then check out the code and run a build script. The build script will be completely independent of the desktop environment/IDE.

This ensures that nothing which happens to be on any one developer's computer is "polluting" the build. (Or, more likely, nothing outside source control is required for the system to work!)

So most software you use will never, ever be built from a developer's desktop.

PS. You might also want to look at the idea of Continuous Integration