need to print the ant version at build, just because?

<echo message="******************** " />
<echo message="${ant.version}" />
<echo message="******************** " />

Done !
Java version?

<echo message="******************** " />
<echo message="${ant.java.version}" />
<echo message="******************** " />

Secure copy over the network with ant :

<scp todir="${username}:${password}@${host}:${destination_dir}" trust="true">
<fileset dir="${src_dir}"/>
</scp>

This ant task, however, needs additional libs : check for the keyword scp here... Afterwards, if you use Eclipse to run ant, you need to do the following :

Go into Eclipse then click on Window->Preferences->ant->Runtime, then select 'Ant Home Entries (Default). Click on the button 'Add External JARs'. Locate the jar file you copied, select it and hit 'OK'.

Need to tell Ant about the proxy?
set ANT_OPTS=-Dhttp.proxyHost=myproxy -Dhttp.proxyPort=3128