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... all you have to do is to copy these lines into your build.xml file:

<taskdef
  name="ejbdoclet"
  classname="xdoclet.modules.ejb.EjbDocletTask"
  classpathref="project.class.path"
/>

I have been dutifully doing this in every one of my build.xml files that needs the task. (Well, not only this one, but other tasks from other tools.) At first, it is novel and exciting, "Look, I just added a snippet of XML to build.xml, and it can do this!" But it's getting old now, especially on the one thousandth time: "What's the class name of that task? And which jar file is it in?" I've tried external entity references which only obscures the issue.

What I want is a way to tell my installation of Ant about any new Ant tasks that's avaiable in third party packages. Do it once. And have that task available to all Ant runs that use the installation, like any other task that come bundled with Ant.

There must be a way to do this that I missed.