My manager gave me the task to rebuild the build machine. I was not the one who initially put together the build system. But I was familiar with it. So I installed all the software I knew I needed. Then I attended to the software I kind of though we would need.The actual build scripts are written in Ant. So I went searching for the Ant install package. I found the Apache Ant download site. On it there was a combo box to choose the site from which you want to download the software. I left the default value alone and tried to download. But it would not work. So I chose another site from the combo box. No luck either. After trying a couple more I started to think something was seriously wrong. Then I noticed that the download kept trying to get to the default site. That keyed me in to a suspicious button called Change. Apparently you need to switch the site in the combo box, then click the Change button before you choice is registered. This was a pretty screwed up user interface. Eventually I got Ant installed.
I also recalled the build needed something from Java. So I installed the Java Run Time environment. But when I tried a test build, I got some errors. Switching up environment variables did not help any. I did a couple Google searches that triggered a memory. What we really needed was the Java Development Kit. I was amused as I downloaded and installed it. The default was to install the Google tool bar. No thank you. And they advertised Open Office during the install as well. We are a Microsoft shop so we do Office thank you.
