Why does ANT tell me that JAVA_HOME is wrong when it is not?

Question

I get the error:

C:\\dev\\ws\\springapp\\build.xml:81: Unable to find a javac compiler; com.sun.tools.javac.Main is not on the classpath. Perhaps JAVA_HOME does not

Answer 1

I was also facing the same problem. I am using Windows 7 and I had two versions of java installed. First I have installed latest version java 7 and then version 5.

Contents of my java installation directory:

C:\Program Files\Java>
jdk1.5.0_14
jdk1.7.0_17
jre1.5.0_14
jre7

and my JAVA_HOME was set to the correct value, which was:

C:\>set ja
JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_14

But still I was getting the same problem:

XXXXXXX\build.xml:478: The following error occurred while
executing this line:
XXXXXXX\build.xml:477: Unable to find a javac compiler;
com.sun.tools.javac.Main is not on the classpath.
Perhaps JAVA_HOME does not point to the JDK.
It is currently set to "C:\Program Files\Java\jre7"

After trying out all the suggestion in this thread I realized my mistake. I was trying to set the environment variable in "User variables" instead of "System Variables" section. After setting it in "System Variables" it worked fine. I am facing another problem though.

The default version of java it points to is still 7.

C:\>java -version
java version "1.7.0_17"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_17-b02)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 23.7-b01, mixed mode, sharing)

I am not sure how to make it point to version 5.