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Apache Ant is a software tool for automating software build processes. It is a build automation utility much like make or cmake, but it appears to apply to Java projects and it nees an XML file called build.xml in the directory ant is to be run in, in order to work.

In other words, where Makefile is used for C or C++ when using make, build.xml is used for Java when using ant.

While Apache ant does exist in the Rapsbian Repo, if you'd much rather install it in the /opt/ directory, like you should with Oracle's JDK, you can download it from the Apache Ant website. The best part: You don't need to compile anything! There is a binary package that will run on ARM just as it would for X86_64 or i386.

$ cd ~/Software
$ curl -SL http://www-us.apache.org/dist//ant/binaries/apache-ant-1.9.6-bin.tar.gz | tar xvz
$ sudo mv apache-ant.1.9.6 /opt/
$ whereis ant                       # ant: /opt/apache-ant-1.9.6/bin/ant ...
$ which ant                         # returns nothing

Those last two lines are there to show that bash does not actually recognize where ant is. And you may have notcied that we downloaded the binaries.

$ sudo bash -c 'cat > /etc/profile.d/ant.sh << EOF
> export ANT_HOME=/opt/apache-ant.1.9.6
> export PATH=\$ANT_HOME/bin:\$PATH
> EOF'

And instead of starting a new terminal (although you could), we'll use the source command to apply ant.sh to our path immediately.

$ source /etc/profile.d/ant.sh

OK, that should be it right? We got Apache Ant installed. One, two, three...

$ ant -version
-bash: ant: command not found.

Hmm...what is missing. Let's try this.

$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/bin/ant /opt/apache-ant-1.9.6/bin/ant /usr/local/bin/ant
$ ant -version
Apache Ant(TM) version 1.9.6 compiled on June 29 2015
$ ant
Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!
Build failed

In this case, that failure is a good thing because it means we have Apache Ant installed!

$ curl -SL http://www-us.apache.org/dist/maven/maven-3/3.3.9/binaries/apache-maven-3.3.9-bin.tar.gz | tar xvz
$ sudo mv apache-maven-3.3.9 /opt/
$ whereis mvn                       # mvn: ... /opt/apache-maven-3.3.9/bin/mvn
$ which mvn                         # returns nothing

• Java
• JRuby
• Make
• CMake
• XML
• [Apache Maven](Apache Maven)
• [Apache Ivy](Apache Ivy)
• [Apache Tomcat](Apache Tomcat)
• SBT

• http://ant.apache.org/
• https://github.com/apache/ant/