The overall themes for Eclipse Ant are:

• robust and enhance
• improved user experience

Top Work Items

• Support for Ant 1.6 features
• Editor enhancements
  • Auto-indent
  • Formatting
  • Templates
  • Dynamic content assist based on Ant version being used
  • Execute targets from the editor outline

Planned Items

• Ant
  • Runtime Options
    • support to run Ant builds in a separate JVM
    • console support for stream coloring and task hyperlinks from separate JVM
    • support relative URLs for Ant classpath entries (allows easier sharing), via launch variables
    • extension point for Ant properties
  • Concurrency
    • investigate support for concurrent builds
  • Pluggable Ant
    • enhance support for using an external installation of Ant
    • code assist in context of Ant version being used
  • Refactoring
    • participate in Java refactorings
    • support Ant refactorings such as "rename property" in Ant editor
  • Ant view
    • support filters in outline (filter nonpublic targets)
    • support sorting in outline
• Plug-in Separation
  • separate Ant UI from External Tools plug-in
• External Tools
• External Tool Builders
  • allow builders to be triggered by a resource delta in a specific working set

The goals listed below are only a guide. The community is also invited to provide input.

• Editor enhancements
• Import a build file > Java Project
  • Importing a build file from the file system (that contains a javac task) to create a Java project with an equivalent buildpath in the workspace
• Bug fixing

The goals listed below are only a guide. The community is also invited to provide input.

• Migrate to Ant 1.6.1
• Editor enhancements
• Import a build file > Java Project
  • Importing a build file from the file system (that contains a javac task) to create a Java project with an equivalent buildpath in the workspace
• Bug fixing

• Support for Ant 1.6 Features [7 days, Darin Swanson]
• Editor Enhancements [10 days, Darin Swanson]

The goals listed below are only a guide. The community is also invited to provide input.

• Bug Fixing: Reduce the bug backlog
• Leak Analysis: Look for memory leaks

The goals listed below are only a guide. The community is also invited to provide input.

• Relative classpath URLs [Darin S]
  • Support for Ant runtime classpath entires with relative URLs. This will use the new support for string substitution from org.eclipse.core.variables.
• Remove dependency on Xerces [Darin S]
  • Remove plug-in dependencies on org.apache.xerces

The goals listed below are only a guide. The community is also invited to provide input.

• Relative classpath URLs [Darin S]
  • Investigate relative URLs supported in Ant core Moving to M5 with plans to make use of support in new plugin "org.eclipse.core.variables"
• Ant View [Jared B] [3 days]
  • Support for filtering nonpublic targets from the outline (bug 39294)
  • Support for sorting targets in the outline (bug 39295)

The goals listed below are only a guide. The community is also invited to provide input.

• Separate JVM console support [1 person week] [Darin S] - Completed in M4, with changes to the debug framework
  • When an Ant build is run in a separate JVM, console task hyperlinks and output coloring are now presented. This has required changes to the debug infrastructure that need to be properly established as API
• Add Ant UI test suite to build [1 person day] [Darin S]
  • We have an Ant UI test suite, but it is not part of the build process
• Relative classpath URLs (and more) [1 person week] [Darin S] - In progress, more work in M4
  • Relative URLs via launch variables in Ant classpath, tasks, types, property files are supported from Ant UI. They are still not supported from Ant core
• Ant Properties [2 person days] [Darin S]
  • Extension point for Ant properties

The goals listed below are only a guide. The community is also invited to provide input.

• Console support for seperate JVM [1 person week]
  • When an Ant build is run in a seperate JVM, console task hyperlinks and output coloring is not properly supported. This requires extra communication between the target VM and the Eclipse SDK.
• Add Ant UI test suite to build [1 person day]
  • We have an Ant UI test suite, but it is not part of the build process
• External Tool Builders Triggering [1 person week]
  • Ensure that external tool builders are invoked when a project is first checked out of a repository (and not invoked when a workspace is re-started with no build state).

The work items listed below are only a guide. The community is also invited to provide input.

• External Tool Builders [Darin S]
  • allow builders to be triggered by a resource delta in a specific working set
• Seperate JVM [Darin S]
  • support to run Ant builds in a seperate VM
  • allow default VM to be controlled at global level, and overriden at configuration level
• Plug-in Seperation [Darin S]
  • seperate Ant UI from External Tools plug-in

• Fixes released to 3.0