Ant on Ubuntu without GCJ

by Mike Christianson

You may be surprised to learn Ant requires GCJ when installed through Synaptic or apt on Ubuntu.  GCJ is GNU’s Java compiler.  When you’re using Sun’s JDK and compiler, GCJ can get in the way — at worst it creates conflicts; at best it causes confusion.

Here’s how I installed Ant on Ubuntu without GCJ. Be sure to check out (easier) alternatives suggested in the comments, below.

  1. Download the current .tar.bz2 distribution of Ant from http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/mirrors/apache/ant/binaries/.
  2. Unpack archive using tar.
    3. tar -xjvf apache-ant-*-bin.tar.bz2
  3. Move the unpacked directory to /usr/local/ant.
  4. Change that directory’s owner to root.
    5. chown -R root:root /usr/local/ant
  5. Add the following lines to /etc/bash.bashrc.
    6. export ANT_HOME=/usr/local/ant
export PATH=${PATH}:${ANT_HOME}/bin

From a new shell, run ant. You should see the following:

Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!
Build failed

Yes, it’s a failure message. But it means Ant is working as expected. :)

Tags: , , , Filed Under ant, eclipse 

Comments

  1. Null on 03.15.2009

    What about sudo apt-get install –no-install-recommends ant ?

  2. Gogu on 04.10.2009

    He-s right, that method is, I think, more biginner-friendly. Find it over here:
    http://picobit.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/ubuntu-eclipse-and-ant-without-gcj/

    This way, you get updates with the other packages.

  3. Mike Christianson on 04.10.2009

    Thanks for the (easier) alternative!

  4. sasq on 09.18.2009

    For some strange reason my apt-get and aptitude does not recognize any ‘recommends’ option, even though the help says it should…

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