# Ant & external tools tutorial

This chapter covers Eclipse's external tools framework, and its integration with Ant, the build tool from the Apache Software Foundation. For more information on Ant, see the Apache Ant manual for documentation. This chapter assumes a basic knowledge of Ant.

This chapter is split into three main sections. First, the basics of working with Ant buildfiles in Eclipse are covered. Next, several Eclipse use cases will be worked through, in which Ant buildfiles can make life a little easier. Finally, the entire external tools framework and how to use non-Ant tools is considered.