I’ve just uploaded the first beta for Ant 1.5.3. One thing I’ve noticed as Ant has matured and become the standard build tool for Java projects is that the betas do not get as much testing as you might expect based on the so-called "open-source " effect.
These days most bug reports actually come after we make a full release and not during the beta period. My guess is that most people do not bother to try out the betas but feel comfortable upgrading to a release. It seems it is the release that actually triggers the testing phase. The consequence is that each major release has more point releases. You can clearly see this trend in Ant releases over time.
This behaviour, whilst understandable at the individual level is perhaps counter-productive to the user community as a whole. An interesting conundrum. For my part, I rarely use a build of Ant that is more than a few days old.
If you are an Ant user, test the beta now.