I got a new desktop for home the other day and I was downloading all my development tools and something strange happened. I downloaded Ant 1.7.0 and unzipped it into my Java tools directory, set my ANT_HOME variable and added all this to my PATH and typed “ant” and it couldn’t find it. Weird.

I go to the Ant bin directory and there are only 3 .cmd files in the directory. None of which are the ant.bat file. The checksum on the zip file was fine as well. I check the Ant distribution zip file size and it’s 11,288,363. I figure I’ll just do a sanity check and download it again and the new download is 11,390,509. WTF? I haven’t modified either of the zip files since downloading.

The first download came from the http://apache.mirrors.timporter.net/ mirror. I originally downloaded the file on December 21st. I just downloaded it again and now it’s the same size as the distribution I downloaded earlier tonight that works fine. I’m not sure how a build fails like that and gets mirrored…just strange I guess. At least the problem on timporter.net has already been fixed.

Warning: Shameless plug! I’m still looking to hire some great Java developers. I just found one the other day but still have 3 open reqs (what can I say, we’re growing). If you’re in the San Francisco area, drop me a line. We have an amazing space (http://sfarmory.com) in the Mission district that we just moved into and a great group of people to work with. You also need to be okay working in the adult industry. One of the developers I work with has a great post about the jobs.