How does Apache Ant resolve duplicate targets

Question

Say I have two targets in ant with the same name in two different build files but, one is imported into the other.

build.xml

<project>
    <target name="once">
        <echo>once</echo>
        </target>

        <target name="twice">
            <echo>twice-a in build.xml</echo>
            </target>
        <!-- duplicate target twice imported again from build2.xml -->
        <import file="build2.xml"/>

</project>

build2.xml

<project>

    <target name="twice">
        <echo>twice-a in build2.xml</echo>
    </target>

</project>

How does ant resolve duplicate targets ?

If it had been in a single file it would have a duplicate target thrown an error however since its imported its not throwing an error.

When I run ant twice I get

$ ant twice
Buildfile: /Users/nav/Codes/build.xml

twice:
     [echo] twice-a in build.xml

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 0 seconds

If ant does take the first declaration as the target then why doesn't moving the import statement up in build.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>

<project>
    <!-- import moved to the top -->
    <import file="build2.xml"/>

    <target name="once">
        <echo>once</echo>
        </target>

        <target name="twice">
            <echo>twice-a in build.xml</echo>
            </target>
</project>

still outputs the same as

$ ant twice
Buildfile: /Users/nav/Codes/build.xml

twice:
     [echo] twice-a in build.xml

BUILD SUCCESSFUL
Total time: 0 seconds

Answer 1

When you assign project names, then you can access the both targets

<project name="build1">
<target name="once">
    <echo>once</echo>
    </target>

    <target name="twice">
        <echo>twice-a in build.xml</echo>
        </target>
    <!-- duplicate target twice imported again from build2.xml -->
    <import file="build2.xml"/>

</project>

Build2

<project name="build2">

 <target name="twice">
     <echo>twice-a in build2.xml</echo>
  </target>

</project>

call ant -p

    Buildfile: build.xml

Main targets:

Other targets:

 build2.twice
 once
 twice

If not project name is assign the imported target are hidden if they have the same name.