Build Automation #5 - Looking beyond
What we saw in the previous posts was a build script for simple HelloWorld application. What about creating an Ant script for a web application? It is fairly simple if you understand the basics. More than ant script you need to understand the following.
Enterprise Archive (ear) structure
Web application deployment descriptor
Application deployment descriptor
The best way to understand the structure is to first build an ear file or a war file with the help of an ide like MyEclipse or NetBeans and then extract it and study its structure. Next is to understand the deployment descriptors which are key in making your application work. The application server uses this information to load and execute your application into appropriate containers. Once you understand and know your web application’s structure and the deployment descriptiors then it is really simple to create an ant script to build it. You can find the next step of automating a HelloWorld web application build and deploying it to JBoss here.
