Overview

Ant is a cross-platform, Java-based build tool. Ant is needed to compile the Bio-Formats Java code.

Although Apache Ant is an Open Source project, you don't need to download the source code and build it. Instead you can simply download one of the binary builds, which is a much simpler process.

Installing Ant on Linux

To install Ant on Debian-based Linux, execute:

sudo apt-get install ant

Other distributions of Linux are likely to have a similar Ant package available through their respective package managers as well.

Installing Ant on other platforms

You can download Ant binaries from

• Apache Ant Binary Distributions Page

On Windows, after unpacking Ant into your Program Files, add the bin subdirectory to your PATH environment variable; e.g.:

C:\Program Files\apache-ant-1.7.1\bin

Once set, new Command Prompts will recognize "ant" as a valid command.