Setting up Apache Ant

Apache Ant is a build management tool widely used for automating the Java projects build process. It has been introduced in Cocos2d-x 3.0 for building the framework for the Android platform. It has made the Android build process simpler and enhanced the cross-platform build. Back in Cocos2d-x 2.x, building the Android apps within the Windows operating system required simulating the UNIX environment by using Cygwin. This required minor hacks for successfully building the code, many of them still remain undocumented on the official Cocos2d-x site.

This tool can be downloaded from the link: https://www.apache.org/dist/ant/binaries/

At the time of writing this book, version 1.9.4 was the latest. This tool is a cross-platform tool so a single download will work on any operating system that provides support for the Java technology.

In order to install this tool, just unzip the file. Remember the path since you will need it during the Cocos2d-x setup process.