I mentioned this briefly in my 15 Ant Tips posts but thought I would follow it up with a more in depth post…

Ant Explorer is available as a standalone version or as an Eclipse plugin. Installation is via setting up the usual Eclipse update URL to point to the yWorks site. After installation – you can right-click on a build.xml file and select “Show Ant Visualization” (also available via the View menu).

While viewing a build file – you can right-click on each node within the diagram and drill into it, execute it or view the source code related to that target. In addition to the Visualization view – you can select Window > Show View > Other > YFiles Ant Visualizer > Ant Properties Visualizer which will show you a visual outline of your build file properties. Checkout the walkthrough for more.

I’m not sure how actually useful the tool is for everyday use but it may be useful for debugging inherited scripts or if you are working on something particularly complicated.