Another solution would be to simply invoke Ant as

ant -Dbuild=foo -Ddist=bar

and leave out the <property> settings in the ant file itself.
If you define a property from the command line, then you
can simply begin using it in the ant file itself.  You don't have
to redefine it using the <property> setting.

Kyle

>>> bodewig@apache.org 07/03/01 10:03AM >>>
make that 

<property name="build" value="${build.from.batch}"/>
<property name="dist"  value="${dist.from.batch}"/>

and invoke Ant as 

ant -Dbuild.from.batch=foo -Ddist.from.batch=bar

Stefan