I am not normally a big fan of ant extensions as task authors tend not to anticipate all the ways in which people use ant scripts. But EL4Ant uses a configuration step to precompile the ant build, which is an interesting way to do things. This configuration step is roughly equivalent to the ant macro functionality, but it takes place at a distinct time from the main build.

The build is set up using a plugin concept, where you select the 'kind of things' you do in your build. You then define the structure of the build source. The configuration step then maps out a set of targets for you to use in your main build. This provides a good way to achieve a number of the points in this article.

The system has only just been released but there are already some really useful looking features like Eclipse integration and EMMA code coverage execution. There are a number of properties you can set that will augment the script which also helps a great deal.

The tool is released under GPL. It might also be worth checking out the EL4J project if you use Spring.

It stems from the old blog.