What Is Ant, Really? Learn about the structure of the Ant build system and how to make it work for you. Understand how you can harness it in different environments and what the pitfalls are. by Join the DZone community and get the full member experience.Join For Free Ant is a bit of a mystery bag. Its behavior is often obscure until you come to look at its code. Then you find that it consists of a number of fairly simple facilities that are often explained from a bottom-up detailed and technical viewpoint and not from a top-down architectural perspective. This article aims to provide the missing top-down view. It is targeted at an audience of software engineers. Armed with this article, and some solid opinions on when and when not to use this tool, you should be able to find your way in the anthill.