Performance improvements in directory scanning. The XSLT task honors the classpath again (bugrep 49271). The distinction between core tasks and optional tasks is abolished. Numerous bugfixes and improvements as documented in Bugzilla and in WHATSNEW.
New task augmenting allows users to add attributes or nested elements to previously defined references. Numerous bugfixes and improvements were made, as documented in Bugzilla and in the WHATSNEW file.
Lexically scoped local properties were added. <import> can now import from any file- or URL-providing resource. Various improvements to the directory scanning code improved scanning performance. There were numerous other bugfixes and improvements.
A new top level element, extension-point, allows build files to be extended with custom targets more easily. The "if" and "unless" attributes will be evaluated according to the values of the properties entered if these properties evaluate to true, false, on, or off. Ant now requires Java 1.4 or later. A new task, include, provides an alternative to <import> that should be preferred when you don't want to override any targets. Numerous bugfixes and improvements were made.
