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

Question

This seems to be a fairly common thing. I want to create a new Java application that does not have any existing source files, but will be able to edit Ant scripts.

Answer 1

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

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