MAST - Mighty Automated Build (MAB)

Mighty Automated Build (MAB) is a specialized script for building Java software products. As of this writing, we currently build four products successfully using MAB, and it serves to ease the build process as well as make our product distributions uniform.

MAB is implemented as a parameterizable script for Apache Ant. Apache Ant is a build tool primarily for Java programs that has features that are similar (but in some ways superior) to tools like Make. Like Make, Ant takes as input a build file with targets that serve as instructions to Ant. The apparent intended use of Ant is that a custom build file is created by developers for each product. We feel that creating and maintaining a new build file for each product is overkill and makes maintaining similar build files for different products difficult. We have traded off flexibility in this case for ease-of-use by creating a single build file that is parameterizable so it works for many different products. The build file does not change from product to product, and users customize the build process for a particular product by writing a simple properties file. Use of MAB, then, requires NO knowledge of how to write an Ant build file.

Current features of MAB include:

• Automatic compilation of all Java files in a product.
• Automatic Javadoc documentation generation of all Java files in a product.
• Separation of source files and binary files for a product.
• Automatic .jar archiving of binary files, with optional manifest.
• Ability to "mix in" static files into the build before final .zipping
• Automatic .zip archive creation of whole build, suitable for release.

For detailed instructions on how to set up, configure, and use MAB, proceed to the next section.