Ant building tool

apt-get install ant

1. Download the newest Ant binary distribution from their homepage http://ant.apache.org; pick the ".tar.gz" file. At the time of the writing it is apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.tar.gz
2. Unzip this installation, and copy the directory "apache-ant-1.7.0" to /usr/share:

   su - root
   cd /home/student/downloads
   tar xzf apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.tar.gz
   mv apache-ant-1.7.0 /usr/share/
   rm apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.tar

3. Find out, if the symlink "ant" points to anything:

   which ant     
   # assume, it gives the reply "/usr/bin/ant"
   ant -version       
   # if this is the newest, e.g. 1.7, then stop here
   ls -al /usr/bin/ant      
   # list symlink's target
   rm /usr/bin/ant          
   # delete the symlink
   ln -s /usr/share/apache-ant-1.7.0/bin/ant /usr/bin/ant   
   # define a new value for it

   If you discover no symlink, then run just the last line.
4. Find out the Ant's version now:

   ant -version

   The version should switch to (at least) 1.7.0.

Ant custom tasks

1. In order to use FTP task (see http://ant.apache.org/manual/install.html):
   1. Get Jakarta ORO package from http://jakarta.apache.org/oro/
   2. Get Commons NET package from http://commons.apache.org/downloads/index.html
   3. Copy JAR files found in these packages to "/usr/share/apache-ant-1.7.0/lib" (it is convenient to use Midnight Commander (mc) to extract needed JARs from larger packages and copy them).