# 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.

1. Eclipse Ant basics: the basics of working with Ant buildfiles in Eclipse are covered
2. Ant build files as project builders: several Eclipse use cases are discussed
3. External tools: the external tools framework and how to use non-Ant tools are covered