Does Eclipse ship ant with its own distribution?

Question

The first time using Apache Ant (I'm thrilled and overloaded at the same time!) To automate a Java application.

I did not go to the Ant site and did not download Ant directly. Rather, I am using the standard plugin that comes with Eclipse. From Eclipse, I can execute test build.xml projects perfectly. But when I run Ant directly from the command line, Windows does not recognize it as a recognized command.

This makes me think that I either do not have Ant installed, or I did not configure it correctly (in general). If it is not installed, then why do these build.xml scripts work when I run them inside Eclipse? Does Eclipse have its own Ant distribution that is not available from the cmd line?

And if this is just a configuration problem, what do I need to do to get Ant to run buildscript of my own taste?

I want to start using Apache Ivy and to start the demos I first need to run Ant and run from the command line.

Thanks for any help or insight :-)

Answer 1

Is there an Eclipse ship with its own ant distribution that is not available from the cmd line?

Essentially, yes. Eclipse associates the base ant environment with its own extensions and integration, but it is closed to installing Eclipse.

If you want to run builds outside of Eclipse, you need to download and install the full Ant distribution.