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

You are also referring to the ""Export ant buildfile".

If you write your own Ant script for building your application outside eclipse, you can write your own targets that use the Ant task to delegate to the generated build.xml.

Also, you can configure a project's 'builders' (project properties » Builders) to run any script (ant or otherwise) you want when you build the project, manually or automatically.