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Rating: 
Summary: Not a book about XP
Review: As the subtitle indicates, this is a tools book, not a process book. Consequently, the XP practices are merely used as a motivation to introduce new Ant features into the build process - and sometimes this feels rather far stretched. In many cases, a good XP team should try a more team- and less tool-oriented solution than presented in this book. Also, the repeatedly mentioned "lead developer" coming to important decisions by himself feels quite contrary to XPs "Whole Team" practice.So the book concentrates on covering Ant, and starts quite promising in this regard. Using a case study to show how a build script can evolve with the needs of a project is a nice idea and the introduction to Ant is concise and to the point. Unfortunately, the book later starts to rush through the different topics, a big amount of it covering how to integrate different tools into the build process. There are also some much-less-than-optimal examples, which makes you wonder about the depth of knowledge of the authors; they even show a hand-made solution to implementing boolean attributes for custom tasks, even though Ant comes with a much more elegant inbuild mechanism. As an advanced "Ant build master", this book still taught me interesting new things about the tool. I'd guess that most beginners would be better off with a book more concentrating on the core concepts of Ant. If you want a good book on Extreme Programming, you will definitively have to look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: A great book on Ant and on using the XP processes in Java
Review: Before I proceed further with the review, I should note that I am the co-author of Java Development with Ant, the book which has been the best selling book about Ant to date. Thus if I were critical of this book, you'd know where I was coming from. But I am not going to be critical -I am going to say nice things about it, and give it 5 stars as anything else would be unfair. This is a really good introduction to Extreme Programming in Java using Ant, Junit and XDoclet. After a quick intro to the concepts of XP, this book follows the story of a team that is using the XP methodology to get stuff out the door. First Ant is introduced, the JUnit -the latter being the key to test-centric development. Then as the chapters progress, the new problems are introduced and the code and the build process refactored and expanded to adapt. I particularly like the chapter where a business merger forces a team reorganisation -organisation change does effect projects, but most software engineering books ignore such events, along with team member dynamics in general. It also repeatedly reinforces the need for automated builds and tests, and has some basic coverage of CruiseControl. CC is the system that keeps our team in check: whenever you break the build, you get email. I get a lot of email. It doesn't go into significant depth in Ant -you will (of course) need the on line documentation, and I would also point my own book. Mostly this isn't an issue -the only place where I had significant differences of opinion was when the book recommended using the task to precompile JSP pages for tomcat. If the authors had tracked the Ant dev mail list, or the open bugreps related to this task, they'd know not to encourage that, because the underlying jasperc doesnt really let you. Also there was some commentary on Ant2.0, which is not going to be the complete rewrite promised on the web site. Again, involvement in the open source project would provide such information.These are minor issues with the non-core parts of Ant and the book. The central theme of the book: using XP, JUnit, Ant and XDoclet for building, testing and deployment of server side code is well covered, and that is what matters. If you want to get into Ant, this is one of the two Ant books to consider owning -ideally you should get both :) I think I'd also get one of the XP series books, like XP installed, for a more abstract treatise on XP, Fowler's Refactoring and a copy of IntelliJ IDEA, the best XP-centric IDE for Java.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book but no CD or download of example
Review: Good book but no CD and can't find example buildfile online at samspublishing.com. Page 4 and Appendix D both say you should be able to download the examples.
Rating: 
Summary: Xtremely interesting
Review: Pros: Nice writing style, clear and not boring, touches not only Ant but quite a few other open-source tools and the Xtreme programming ways... Cons: its vast breath is counterbalanced by
little depth. Ant 's coverage is appropriate to get you started working with it quickly, and to have you appreciate what this tool can do for you. Forget about being able to work with JUnit or XDoclet just by reading this book. You will barely discover that they exist.. and expect a lot of painful hours spent on the traditionally poor open-source docs.
Overall a good buy though. If you want a more in-depth treatment of Ant I recommend Java Development With Ant
by Erik Hatcher, Steve Loughran
Rating:
Summary: Extremely Useful Book for a Software Developer
Review: This book is a "must-have" for anyone who will be leading a development project, in addition to being extremely useful for any developer. The extreme programming section is wonderful - it does a great job of explaining a very useful methodology for delivering a successful, on-time, within-budget project. The book also thoroughly explains each topic (such as using Ant for compilation, unit testing, etc) and gives plenty of examples so it's easy to understand. I would definitely use this book every step of the way for a major development project!
Rating:
Summary: Extremely Useful Book for a Software Developer
Review: This book is a "must-have" for anyone who will be leading a development project, in addition to being extremely useful for any developer. The extreme programming section is wonderful - it does a great job of explaining a very useful methodology for delivering a successful, on-time, within-budget project. The book also thoroughly explains each topic (such as using Ant for compilation, unit testing, etc) and gives plenty of examples so it's easy to understand. I would definitely use this book every step of the way for a major development project!
Rating:
Summary: Ant - Good For More Than Java
Review: This was a very easy book to read. I was able to get up to speed in Ant very quickly. Although I initially read it to get more experience with Java and Java tools, I was able to use it to improve my existing build processes in a non-Java work environment.
Rating:
Summary: Ant - Good For More Than Java
Review: This was a very easy book to read. I was able to get up to speed in Ant very quickly. Although I initially read it to get more experience with Java and Java tools, I was able to use it to improve my existing build processes in a non-Java work environment.
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