Ant on Windows

1. Unzip file apache-ant-1.7.0-bin.zip, e.g. under c:/tools
2. Define a new environment variable ANT_HOME with this value - c:/tools/apache-ant-1.7.0 (see Defining System Environment Variables).
3. Add another directory to the Path variable - i.e. add before all other path entries %ANT_HOME%/bin and separate it from the next Path values by a semicolon (;)

Checking the installation

1. Close DOS and Total Commander windows, if they were opened before you redefined the environment variables.

2. Open a DOS window window somewhere, type "ant -version" and check the response

   c:\temp>ant -version
   Apache Ant version 1.6.5 compiled on June 2 2005

3. If you are new to Apache Ant, you may want to test the Ant installation by building some simple Ant project. For example, create a subdirectory c:/temp/src and create any file Hello.java in this directory (see the source text of Hello.java above). Also create the following file with EditPlus or a similar text editor and save it as build.xml in the directory c:/temp: 

   <project name="testproject" default="usage" basedir=".">
       <target name="usage" description="Message on how to use Ant buildfiles">
           <echo>Please use the 'build -projecthelp' to see
               a list of available build targets.</echo>
       </target>
       <target name="clean" description="Removes build artifacts">
           <delete dir="build" failonerror = "false"/>
       </target>
       <target name="init" depends="clean" description="Creates
           the directory structure for a simple Java project">
           <mkdir dir="build"/>
       </target>
       <target name="compile" depends="init"
               description="Compiles the sources">
           <echo level="info">Compiling files</echo>
           <javac srcdir="src"
               destdir="build"
               debug="true"
               source="1.5"
               target="1.5"/>
       </target>
       <target name="run">
           <java classname="Hello"
               fork="true"
               classpath="build">
           </java>
       </target>
   </project>

4. Run the following commands in a DOS window:

   c:\temp>ant
   c:\temp>ant -projecthelp
   c:\temp>ant compile
   c:\temp>ant run

   These should display

   1. a usage message,
   2. a list of all commands availabe in the Ant script,
   3. a message of successful compilation of the file c:\temp\src\Hello.java,
   4. the message printed out by the Java program.