Do editors for Ant scripts exist?

Question

I have many ant files with more than 10000 lines. Do editors or plugins exist for Eclipse that can help me author the files, eg press F3 to find target?

Answer 1

Yes, Eclipse has an Ant Editor .

The Ant editor provides specialized features for editor Ant buildfiles. Associated with the editor is a Ant buildfile specific Outline view which shows the structure of the Ant build file. It is updated as you edit the buildfile

The editor includes the following features: - Syntax highlighting - Content/code assist (including Ant specific templates) - Annotations

The most common way to invoke the Ant editor is to open an Ant buildfile from one of the navigation views or Package Explorer using pop-up menus or by clicking the file (single or double-click depending on your preference settings).

When a build file is open in the Ant editor, the Outline view provides useful high-level information:

---

There is also a dedicated Ant view, which is fairly similar to the outline view (but does not require the build file to be in an editor): Window → Show View → Other...

Once you have opened the Ant view, you can add a buildfile to it, and the view will show targets, etc.: