An example of Ant build file

init target

<project name="MyProject" default="dist" basedir=".">

    <description>simple example build file</description>

    <!-- set global properties for this build -->

    <property name="src" location="src"/>

    <property name="build" location="build"/>

    <property name="dist" location="dist"/>

    <target name="init">

         <!-- Create the time stamp -->

        <tstamp/>

       <!-- Create the build directory structure used by compile -->

       <mkdir dir="${build}"/>

    </target>

compile target

<target name="compile" depends="init" description="compile the source">

    <!-- Compile the java code from ${src} into ${build} -->

    <javac srcdir="${src}" destdir="${build}"/>

</target>

dist target

<target name="dist" depends="compile" description="generate the distribution">

    <!-- Create the distribution directory -->

    <mkdir dir="${dist}/lib"/> 

    <!-- Put everything in ${build} into MyProject-${DSTAMP}.jar file -->

    <jar jarfile="${dist}/lib/${ant.project.name}-${DSTAMP}.jar" basedir="${build}"/>

</target>

clean target

<target name="clean" description="clean up" >

    <!-- Delete the ${build} and ${dist} directory trees -->

    <delete dir="${build}"/>

    <delete dir="${dist}"/>

</target>

End of the main project tag

</project>

How to set the default target which will be the starting point when we run build file ?

In above example, the build file execution starts with the default target (here, it is "dist") given in project tag.

<project name="MyProject" default="dist" basedir =".">