These pages describe the design and implementation of Mutant.

For some time, there has been the concept of Ant 2.0. a rearchitecting of Ant designed to address the shortcomings in the design of Ant 1.x, while drawing the experience gained in that development. This rearchitecting would most likely be accompanied by at least some break in backward compatability. Over time Ant 2.0 has come to be known as Ant2 and the current Ant codebase is generally known as Ant1.

Mutant is my proposal, a revolution, for Ant2. Actually, I consider it more an evolution of the design and implementation used for Ant1, but in Jakarta parlance, being a separate codebase, it is termed a revolution.

There is no special significance in the name Mutant. I chose it because, as a word, it is an extension of the word Ant and it also signifies a change from the previous generation

Mutant is not the only proposed revolution for Ant2. Peter Donald has developed another known as Myrmidon which presents a different view of how Ant2 could be realized. Other people hold the view that Ant1 can continue to evolve and that there is no need for rearchitecture of its codebase. I recommend you investigate all these points of view.

As I write this, no decision has been taken as to which codebase will be adopted for Ant2. It may not be Mutant and it could even be some entirely new proposal. These pages do not compare and contrast Mutant with these other proposals or points of view, at least not explicitly. They are just intended to describe how Mutant is designed and implemented and why it is the way it is.

	Caution Mutant is not even an alpha release. While it is relatively stable, it is subject to change. There are no backward compatability guarantees for any of the classes, interfaces, build files, configuration, launch scripts, etc that Mutant provides. In particular, some features in Mutant are experimental and may not, in the long run, prove to be worthwhile.

Start now by looking at the key requirements which have shaped the design of Mutant.

Conor MacNeill