Set environment variables
This is the part that I always forget. Because you’re installing Ant by hand, you also need to deal with setting environment variables by hand.
For Windows XP: To set environment variables on Windows XP, right click on My Computer and select Properties. Then go to the Advanced tab and click the Environment Variables button at the bottom.
For Windows 7: To set environment variables on Windows 7, right click on Computer and select Properties. Click on Advanced System Settings and click the Environment Variables button at the bottom.
The dialog for both Windows XP and Windows 7 is the same. Make sure you’re only working on system variables and not user variables.
The only environment variable that you absolutely need is JAVA_HOME, which tells Ant the location of your JRE. If you’ve installed the JDK, this is likely c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.x.x\jre on Windows XP and c:\Program Files(x86)\Java\jdk1.x.x\jre on Windows 7. You’ll note that both have spaces in their paths, which causes a problem. You need to use the mangled name[3] instead of the complete name. So for Windows XP, use C:\Progra~1\Java\jdk1.x.x\jre and for Windows 7, use C:\Progra~2\Java\jdk1.6.0_26\jre if it’s installed in the Program Files(x86) folder (otherwise use the same as Windows XP).
That alone is enough to get Ant to work, but for convenience, it’s a good idea to add the Ant binary path to the PATH variable. This variable is a semicolon-delimited list of directories to search for executables. To be able to run ant in any directory, Windows needs to know both the location for the ant binary and for the java binary. You’ll need to add both of these to the end of the PATH variable. For Windows XP, you’ll likely add something like this:
;c:\java\ant\bin;C:\Progra~1\Java\jdk1.x.x\jre\bin
For Windows 7, it will look something like this:
;c:\java\ant\bin;C:\Progra~2\Java\jdk1.x.x\jre\bin
Done
Once you’ve done that and applied the changes, you’ll need to open a new command prompt to see if the variables are set properly. You should be able to simply run ant and see something like this:
Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!
Build failed