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Trying to use Phonegap in Eclipse on windows 8. I've created a project at C:\Development\HelloWorld. In the command line, when I type:

phonegap local build android

I get the following error:

An error occurred during creation of android sub-project. ERROR : executing command 'ant', make sure you have ant installed and added to your path.

My PATH: 

C:\Program Files\nodejs\;C:\Development\adt-bundle\sdk\platform-tools;C:\Development\adt-bundle\sdk\tools;%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%ANT_HOME%\bin;

Whats going wrong? I have downloaded Ant into my Development folder and all other necessary downloads are downloaded as well. Any help would be appreciated.

Rex_C
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3 Answers3

73

I was following Phonegap's platform guide for Android and I kept getting the above error. The directions on the guide were a little confusing. I went back to check what I had installed and found some configuration errors.

Under Environment Variables, I created new ANDROID_HOME, ANT_HOME, and JAVA_HOME system variables with the respective physical file paths as the value. This part may be overkill, but I was trying to cover my bases and I have noticed no significant issues with it so far.

Example:

Variable: ANDROID_HOME Value: C:\Development\adt-bundle\sdk

Variable: ANT_HOME Value: C:\Development\apache-ant-1.9.2

Variable: JAVA_HOME Value: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_45

Next I added the following values to the Path system variable in Environment Variables:

%JAVA_HOME%\bin;%ANT_HOME%\bin;%ANDROID_HOME%\platform-tools;%ANDROID_HOME%\tools;

After making these changes and continuing to follow the guide, everything worked like it should. It boiled down to not having my system variables set to the correct physical file path.

Community
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Rex_C
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  • +1. You saved my day. I got suck with this error since last two days. thanks...!!! – Chintan Soni Jun 29 '14 at 02:41
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    Do you have any idea, if there can be another problem with ant, which throws the same error? Every time I try to run "cordova platform add android" I get this same error, where ant is being executed and I need to make sure its installed and path to it exists. I am doing everything like you listed, even tried doing it without any variables, just absolute path, tried everything, but unluckily with no result :/ – Boyan Hristov Jul 15 '14 at 20:06
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Check android in cmd, if it says: 'xcopy' was not recognized.

then add to your path: 

%SystemRoot%\system32; %SystemRoot%; %SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;
hdmartinez
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5

Just as a extra note to Rex_C's answer: Be sure to reference the Java Development Kit (JDK) and not the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) in the JAVA_HOME variable. This will prevent the

Command failed to execute : ant jar

error when running phonegap->android.

Steiny
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    hey I did follow your instruction and it works. just make sure to close your command line and reopen it. That was the only thing missing from your instruction. – electricfeel1979 Feb 20 '14 at 14:38