Ant sucks

big time.
Whoever thinks of accomplishing anything non-trivial with Ant is victim of a self-delusion.
Ant contains no easy way to manipulate typed variables,
no flow control mechanisms
no nothing.
It's distilled pain.

You can easily do the same things in Java, with a lot more reusability, debugging, ease of integration of external frameworks....

XML is not meant to write code, it's meant to represent STATIC DATA. If you code in XML, you might as well wash your clothes in a grinder.

Ant SUCKS!