Detailed steps

Assumptions: your project is called helloworld, it uses log4j for logging, hibernate for querying the database, and wants to reuse the utils module.

Run "antmod createrelease" and it will interactively create an initial release descriptor file in the directory ${antmod.checkoutdir}/antmod-releases for you. Take a look in the directory to see what it looks like.

Afterwards there will be a development release descriptor for the project, in the file helloworld/dev.xml. Over time, you will fill the directory ${antmod.checkoutdir}/antmod-releases/helloworld with more XML files, each one representing a unique version of the helloworld project.

Next, edit the ${antmod.checkoutdir}/antmod-releases/helloworld/dev.xml file, until it looks like this. Don't forget to commit your changes in the XML file to CVS or Subversion.

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
    <release buildtype="java">
      <!-- the modules in build order -->
      <module name="utils" type="library" version="trunk" repos="default"/>
      <module name="helloworld" type="main" version="trunk" repos="default"/>

      <!-- the java libraries this release depends on -->
      <javalib>log4j-1.2.8.jar</javalib>

      <!-- override any Antmod and build-plugin property values -->
      <properties>
        # enable automatic generation of ".hbm" mapping files during 'ant build'
        antmod.hibernate.generatemapping.enabled=true
        # enable javac deprecation warning messages
        antmod.javac.deprecation=true
      </properties>

    </release>