Ant did not include IF THEN ELSE, unless you added the contrib package.
If you understood the paradigm, you could write branches in Ant files simply using properties and guards on properties ("unless"). Using IF in Ant was basically admission of not having understood Ant.
This said, I used Ant for a very limited amount of time.
As of Ant 1.9.1, you can use 'if' and 'unless' attributes on any task or element in a target. I stopped using Ant a long time ago, but this was a pleasant discovery when I had to pick up an old Ant based project recently.
I agree, that is what I meant: there were people who installed Contrib to have <if> element, but in reality you did not need that you could just use Ant's built-in features like you said. In my opinion installing Contrib to use <if> was a demonstration of not having understood how Ant works.
If you understood the paradigm, you could write branches in Ant files simply using properties and guards on properties ("unless"). Using IF in Ant was basically admission of not having understood Ant.
This said, I used Ant for a very limited amount of time.