This sometimes (some complex recursive scripts) leads to really huge trees of useless nodes in the "Messages - Ant Build" view. (Example: half the screen of empty property task nodes)

DRAWBACKS:

• Resizing "Messages" window takes too long as the virual window size has to be recalculated.
• For the same reason, expanding all tree nodes takes too long.
• Scrollbar is too small to be useful
• resulting view has too many data, too litle information.
• switching to text view is even worse

Some statistics:
IDEA produces: 2240 lines
Ant from cmd line: 267 lines

SOLUTION:

Should work like original ant logger.
Task node should pre present in the mentioned view only if there are any messages to display.
Unlike Ant's default logger, Idea displays tree view (not flat view), thus task node would be present if at least one message is available from this task or any its children.

WORKAROUND:

In ant build script, remove Idea's listener from the project's build listeners and wrap it with the custom listener that implements this filtering... Bit tricky hack but it works...