The IDE also contains free-form project templates for Java and web applications. Free-form projects do not produce an Ant script or hold project metadata in another form. Instead, these projects rely on your existing Ant script to provide instructions for handling your project source.
The full distribution of the IDE contains the following free-form templates:
Free-form Java projects can contain multiple source folders. The classpath relationships and handling instructions for your source directories must be handled in your Ant script.
In the project's properties, you declare the source folders, classpath, and output files for your project. Each source root can have a unique classpath and output file. These settings do not affect the actual contents or classpath of your application. The settings only tell the IDE how to handle the code. For example, the classpath settings tell the IDE which classes to make available for code completion.
In free-form projects, the IDE relies on your Ant script to provide targets for all IDE actions, such as running, debugging, and generating Javadoc. If your Ant script does not contain targets for these commands, the commands are disabled.
You can write debug targets in your Ant script or in a supplementary Ant script. You can also add a shortcut to any of your Ant script's targets to the contextual menu of your project's node in the Projects window.
For a full guide to configuring free-form projects, see: