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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-20T10:43:13+00:00

I’m trying to use ant in a vista 64 environment to build some docbook/xml

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I’m trying to use ant in a vista 64 environment to build some docbook/xml files.

However, I can’t resolve this error message. Anybody have suggestions?

C:\Users\Robert Admin>ant
Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\li
b\tools.jar
Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!
Build failed

Googling around, I see that this tools.jar message is the result of ant not being able to find the jdk. In fact, C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\li
b\tools.jar is a JRE installed with another program (I’m guessing). Tools.jar is located here: C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_22\lib

I can’t seem to tell Ant to look in the JDK path, only the JRE path which was already there. (Judging from the Ant documentation, it seems that JRE is insufficient). 

C:\Users\Robert Admin>echo %JAVA_HOME%

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_22\bin

C:\Users\Robert Admin>ant

Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\li
b\tools.jar
Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!
Build failed

C:\Users\Robert Admin>echo %ANT_HOME%

I:\My Documents\1latest\ant    
C:\Users\Robert Admin>where java

C:\Windows\System32\java.exe
C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\java.exe
C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_22\bin\java.exe

C:\Users\Robert Admin>java -version
java version "1.6.0_22"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_22-b04)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 17.1-b03, mixed mode)

Update #1. I tried uninstalling the 64 bit jdk and installing the 32 bit jdk. Result: 

C:\Users\Robert Admin>java -version
java version "1.6.0_22"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_22-b04)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 17.1-b03, mixed mode)

C:\Users\Robert Admin>ant
Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\li
b\tools.jar
Buildfile: build.xml does not exist!
Build failed
C:\Users\Robert Admin>echo %JAVA_HOME%
C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_22\bin
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I had this problem on a 64-bit Windows 7 machine and Ant 1.8.2. The solution was to use the admin tools mentioned by #bigfix to set the environment variables. Follow the Ant installation instructions for Windows. But do not set the path as %ANT_HOME%\bin. Instead, use an explicit path such as C:\jdk-1.5.0.05\bin.

    My first test failed because my command window was already open and using the old env vars. Close it and open a new one. Then try the test. It worked for me.

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