Question

I am android developer.I am not aware of ant in android .I have downloaded a code from internet But It has file called build.xml but I am not able to find out what it is doing and for what purpose it is used please give some advise or some kind of tutorial.So I can understand its working thanks in advance.

Answer 1

When you are developing your application, Eclipse is the most convenient way of building the project.

However Ant is most useful when you come to produce a release version. You can set up your Ant build, such that it takes the same source files as the Eclipse project, yet produces a signed, zip-aligned version of the apk in completely separate output location.

By means of a custom build.properties file you can specify source and output locations, keystore names and locations and passwords. It also takes care of any Proguard obfuscation you may want.You can do all this from the command line with a single statement and know that you are going through a repeatable process, not vulnerable to a mouse click in the wrong place.

Have a look at Managing Projects from the Command Line and Building and Running from the Command Line

Take the build.xml from the sample project referred to and use it as a basis for your own project. It works pretty much out of the box.