Building vs. Compiling (Java)

Question

Thinking that the answer to this is pretty obvious but here it goes:

When I am working on a small project for school (in java) I compile it.

On my

Answer 1

Actually you are doing the same thing. Ant is build system based on XML configuration files that can do a wide range of tasks related to compiling software. Compiling your java code is just one of those tasks. There are many others such as copying files around, configuring servers, assembling zips and jars, and compiling other languages such as C.

You don't need Ant to compile your software. You can do it manually as you are doing at school. Another alternative to Ant is a product called Maven. Both Ant and Maven do the same thing , but in quite different ways.

Lookup Ant and Maven for more details.

Answer 2

In simple words

Compilation translates java code (human readable) into bytecode, so the Virtual machine understands it.

Building puts all the compiled parts together and creates (builds) an executable.