]> To make UIMA analysis components easily consumable for other users, UIMA defines the PEAR (Processing Engine ARchive) file format. This allows applications and tools to manage UIMA analysis components automatically for verification, deployment, invocation and testing. So far the PEAR file format is the desired output format for an UIMA analysis component. With the PEAR packaging Ant Task it is possible to create such a PEAR package for the analysis component automatically. To use the PEAR packaging Ant task it is necessary to define an additional classpath setting for the ant build. The two necessary jars for this setting are the uima-core.jar that contains the PEAR packaging code and the uima-pear-ant-task.jar that contains the code for the PEAR packaging Ant task. The additional classpath setting can look like: ]]> Update the classpath fileset with your local path settings. Next we have to define a custom Ant task for the PEAR packaging. The definition looks like: ]]> The custom PEAR packaging Ant task is called packagePear. This task name is used later to package a PEAR file. The classname attribute contains the main class of the PEAR packaging Ant task component and should not be changed. The classpathref attribute refers the defined pearTask.classpath that is necessary to execute the PEAR packaging task. Now we are ready to use the PEAR packaging Ant task within our build target. To call the PEAR packaging just integrate the custom defined task <packagePear>as shown in the fragment below: ]]> The <packagePear> task has the following mandatory properties. If a property is not necessary, provide it with an empty content. componentID - The main component ID of the UIMA component that should be packaged mainComponentDesc - The main component descriptor that should be used to run the PEAR package content classpath - The classpath settings that must be used to run the PEAR package content - use $main_root macros datapath - The datapath settings that must be used to run the PEAR package content - use $main_root macros mainComponentDir - The main component directory that contains the PEAR package content targetDir - The target directory where the created PEAR package is written to. The filename for the created PEAR package is <componetID>.pear Additionally it is possible to specify environment variable settings that are necessary to run the PEAR package. This is done with the <envVar> element as shown above. The name specifies the variable name and the value specifies the variable value.