Some key points include
- Ant 1.8 has improved directory scanning performance and better symbolic link cycle handling
- Brings enhancements and bug fixes to many tasks and types (a strong point for Ant) as well as some core changes.
- With more than 275 fixed Bugzilla issues, Ant 1.8 flaunts some new performance improvements. A large directory scan, which would have taken 14 minutes in Ant 1.7.1, now takes as little as 22 seconds with Ant 1.8.
- Ant 1.8 includes a handful of new elements including
, a new top-level element that assists in writing reusable build files that are meant to be imported.Its name and dependency-list are similar to and it can be used like a from the command line or a dependency-list but in addition, the importing build file can add targets to the 's depends list.
Other additions include:
- New lexically scoped local properties.
- An enhanced
that can import from any file or URL resource. - An easier mechanism for extending Ant's property expansion.
- A new task called include that provides a preferred alternative to
when you don't want to override any targets. - Rewritten if and unless attributes that do what is expected when applied to a property expansion (i.e. if="${foo}" means "yes, do it" if ${foo} expands to true. In Ant 1.7.1 it would mean "no" unless a property named "true" existed). This adds "testing conditions" to property expansion as a new use-case.
Ant 1.8 now requires at least Java 1.4 or later.
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