This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz by Scott Stirling. Original Post: Ant performance Feed Title: Blaug Blawg Blog Feed URL: http://users.rcn.com/scottstirling/rss.xml Feed Description: Java Testing, Tools and Engineering Latest Java Buzz Posts Latest Java Buzz Posts by Scott Stirling Latest Posts From Blaug Blawg Blog

I couldn't find anything on the Web relevant to Ant performance.  Having used Ant for a few years now, I wonder if it could be tuned for performance.  This is something the Ant developers have probably thought of, but I haven't found anything published.

A best practices guide for well-performing Ant builds would be very useful.  Some things obviously take time, such as forking new JVMs, which we have to do a lot with Ant to avoid classpath conflicts at compile time, test time, test reporting time, etc.  But some things I wonder about, like using XML entities to break up build files -- does this incurr a one-time penalty at start-up?  What about properties: do they all get loaded into one big pool?  What kind of storage are they kept in?  How are they accessed?  Are there performance concerns around resolving complex nets of property values and locations?  What's the cost of an <ant> or an <antcall> usage?

Fun questions I'd love to answer but don't have time right now.