I use a desktop with eight cores to build a Java application using Ant (through a javac target). Is there a way to speed up the compilation by using more than one thread or
You can use Buck Build to increase your build speed and utilize multiple cores.
In a nutshell:
Buck is a build system developed and used by Facebook. It encourages the creation of small, reusable modules consisting of code and resources, and supports a variety of languages on many platforms.
Buck builds independent artifacts in parallel to take advantage of multiple cores on your machine. Further, it reduces incremental build times by keeping track of unchanged modules so that the minimal set of modules is rebuilt.