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Installing Ant

The binary distribution of Ant consists of the following directory layout:

  ant
   +--- bin  // contains launcher scripts
   |
   +--- lib  // contains Ant jars plus necessary dependencies
   |
   +--- docs // contains documentation
   |      +--- ant2    // a brief description of ant2 requirements
   |      |
   |      +--- images  // various logos for html documentation
   |      |
   |      +--- manual  // Ant documentation (a must read ;-)
   |
   +--- etc // contains xsl goodies to:
            //   - create an enhanced report from xml output of various tasks.
            //   - migrate your build files and get rid of 'deprecated' warning
            //   - ... and more ;-)

Only the bin and lib directories are required to run Ant. To install Ant, choose a directory and copy the distribution file there. This directory will be known as ANT_HOME.


Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows ME Note:

On these systems, the script used to launch Ant will have problems if ANT_HOME is a long filename (i.e. a filename which is not of the format known as ``8.3''). This is due to limitations in the OS's handling of the "for" batch-file statement. It is recommended, therefore, that Ant be installed in a short, 8.3 path, such as C:${\backslash}$Ant.

On these systems you will also need to configure more environment space to cater for the environment variables used in the Ant launch script. To do this, you will need to add or update the following line in the config.sys file

shell=c:\command.com c:\ /p /e:32768



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Andrew Marlow 2003-07-08