Developing With Apache Ant

Apache Ant is a build tool that is used extensively by both the Web Space Server source and the extension environment. You can download the latest version of Ant from http://ant.apache.org. After downloading, uncompress the archive into a folder. You then need to set the ANT_HOME environment variable to add binaries to your PATH.

To Set the ANT_HOME Variable on Windows

1. Choose Start -> Control Panel, and double-click the System icon.

2. Click the Advanced tab, and then click the Environment Variables button.

3. Under System Variables, select New to create the ANT_HOME environment variable.

4. Set the variable name to ANT_HOME and the variable value to apache-install-dir\apache-ant-version and click OK.

   For example, the installation directory might be C:\Java\apache-ant-1.7.0.

5. Select New again to create the ANT_OPTS environment variable.

6. Set the variable name to ANT_OPTS and the variable value to -Xms256M -Xmx512M and click OK.

7. Select the PATH environment variable and select Edit.

8. Add %ANT_HOME%\bin to the end or beginning of the PATH.

9. Click OK and then click OK again.

10. To test the setting, type ant at a command prompt and press Return.

    • If a Build not found error message appears, you have correctly installed Ant.

    • If you do not see an error message, check the environment variable settings and make sure they are pointing to the correct directory locations.

To Set the ANT_HOME Variable on a Linux or Macintosh System

1. In your home folder, open the .bash_profile file in the root directory.

2. Add the following lines to the file, substituting the directory where you installed Ant:

   ANT_HOME=/apache-install-dir/apache-ant-version
   ANT_OPTS="-Xms256M -Xmx512M"
   PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:$ANT_HOME/bin
   export ANT_HOME ANT_OPTS PATH

3. To test the setting, type ant at a command prompt and press Return.

   • If a Build not found error message appears, you have correctly installed Ant.

   • If you do not see an error message, check the environment variable settings and make sure they are pointing to the correct directory locations.