### Creating Ant buildfiles

Ant buildfiles are just text files, so the most straightforward way to create an Ant buildfile in Eclipse is:

1. File > New > File.
2. Enter any name for the file, but make sure it has a .xml extension.
3. Click Finish.

As long as the file has a .xml extension, Eclipse will consider it to be a possible Ant buildfile, and will enable Ant-related actions when it is selected. Until a file has ant buildfile content, you will need to open it using Open With > Ant Editor.

As will be demonstrated in a later section, an Ant buildfile can be created for an Eclipse plug-in that contains predefined targets that are useful for deploying the plug-in.