ERROR: executing command 'ant' - After installation and setting ANT_HOME

Question

After wrestling with my environment variables to get the proper directory set, I can now get the version with:

C:\Projects\TestProj>ant -version
Apache Ant(TM) version 1.8.4 compiled on May 22 2012

Ant appears to be working:

C:\Projects\TestProj>ant
Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!
Build failed

I still get the error when I try:

C:\Projects\TestProj>cordova -d platform add android
cordova library for "android" already exists. No need to download. Continuing.
Checking if platform "android" passes minimum requirements...
Creating android project...
Running command: C:\Users\Administrator\.cordova\lib\android\cordova\3.4.0\bin\c
reate.bat --cli C:\Projects\TestProj\platforms\android com.company.testproj
TestProj

C:\Users\Administrator\.cordova\lib\android\cordova\3.4.0\bin\node_modules\q\q.j
s:126
                throw e;
                      ^
Error: ERROR : executing command 'ant', make sure you have ant installed and add
ed to your path.

From all of the posts that I have read, this is an issue with ANT_HOME, but it appears I have that part of it tackled. Edit I've installed ant 1.9.3 to program files, and bin resides in: EDIT Changed to just ant, instead of apache-ant-1.9.3-bin\apache-ant-1.9.3

C:\Program Files\ant

Echo home:

C:\Projects\TestProj>echo %ANT_HOME%
C:\Program Files\ant

And of course I have %ANT_HOME%\bin in my path. Any help identifying the issue would be appreciated.

Funny thing is that ANT_HOME is not defined in my computer and not called in check_reqs.js, so I don't think it's the problem. — QuickFix
check_reqs.js just runs ant -version and displays the message you see in case of error. I have no idea why node detects an error as ant seems to work when you run it manually. — QuickFix

QuickFix QuickFix · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-14T16:25:12

I think the path you use for ANT_HOME is wrong. C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules\ant\ant seems to be the path to the ant npm module but not the ant command.

Ant command more probably is somewhere in program files. In a cmd, run where ant to know where in your path ant is found and use this path for ANT_HOME. (in the folder you should see ant, ant.cmd and ant.bat)

After further investigation, I think your problem is caused half by cordova not correctly checking node errors and half because of registry setting in your computer (a cmd autorun parameter).

You can check answers in those posts for more info:

Check if you have a registry key HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor\AutoRun

ERROR: executing command 'ant' - After installation and setting ANT_HOME

2 Answers