Private ANT targets
In ANT, the optional ‘description‘ attribute can be used to provide a one line description of any given target, which is printed by the -projecthelp commandline option. Targets without such a description are deemed internal or private and will not be listed, unless either the verbose or debug option is used.
But what if you want to create a target which cannot be executed directly? A target which is meant only for internal use by other targets and cannot or should not be executed as a standalone target.
A small and elegant trick I learnt from a colleague at ThoughtWorks is, let the target names begin with a dash, e.g., -init
[target name=“-init”].
If you try to execute this target from the command promt, it would be considered as an argument and ant will give the following error: Unknown argument: -init
Simple and handy trick when working with large build files.
