Ant properties

There are a couple ways to declare properties for ant build file.

No.1 declare propeties on command line

ant -DpropertyName=value...

No.2 declare properties in build.xml

<property name="foo.dist" value="dist"/>

No.3 generate the properties file and load the properties into build.xml

<property file="prop1.properties" />

Or

<loadproperties>
    <file file="prop2.properties"/>
</loadproperties>

But if you use multiple ways above at the same time and there are duplicated properties, which one will win?

Scenario 1: Duplicated properties in one property file, the one appears later will win.

name=abc
...
name=test

The value of property "name" will be "test".

Scenario 2: Duplicated properties in different property file or in build.xml itself.
The one appears earlier will win.
build.xml

<property file="prop1.properties" />
<loadproperties>
    <file file="prop2.properties"/>
</loadproperties>

prop1.properties

name=abc

prop2.properties

name=test

This time, the value of property "name" will be "abc".

Or
build.xml

<property name="name" value="AAA"/>
<property file="prop1.properties" />

The value of "name" will be "AAA"

Scenario 3:The property on the command line will always win.
build.xml

<property name="name" value="AAA"/>

and you run it like this

ant -Dname=fromCommandLine

This time, the value of "name" is "fromCommandLine".