How do I create a new Java project, without existing source files, with the ability to manually edit the Ant script using NetBeans

Question

It seems like it's a fairly common thing to do. I want to create a new Java application that does not have any existing source files, but be able to edit the Ant scripts.

Answer 1

You should be able to edit any Ant file that Netbeans generates as part of a new project. They're stored in the project folder (the one that contains the nbproject directory) as build.xml, which in turn references build-impl.xml.

The idea is that you can edit build.xml in order to override the Ant targets in build-impl.xml.