(netbeans 6.1, external ant 1.7)

There are some great tools out there to generate a visual overview of the dependencies between the tasks within an ant file. Here is an example for Netbeans build-impl.xml file using Grand:

build-impl ant task dependencies

build-impl ant task dependencies

Here is the snippet from the task in my build.xml (following descriptions in Visual Documentation of Ant Dependencies in 3 Simple Steps):

    <target name="visual-ant-task-dependencies">
        <typedef resource="net/ggtools/grand/antlib.xml" /><!-- if its in your ants lib dir, otherwise use classpath="" -->
        <grand output="build.dot" buildfile="${basedir}/nbproject/build-impl.xml">
             <filter name="fromnode" node="jar"/>
             <!-- filter name="tonode" node="xxxx"/ -->
        </grand>
	<exec executable="dot">
            <!-- arg line="-Tpng -Gsize=11.69,8.27 -Grotate=90 -o build.png ${basedir}/build.dot" / -->
            <arg line="-Tpng -Gsize=23.39,16.54 -o build.png ${basedir}/build.dot" />
        </exec>
    </target>

I uploaded the grand.jar to my ant home /lib directory. Of course you will need graphviz to be installed for the dot command. Have fun!