I need to do some tests that involve the output of our application builds. Normally configuration management does the builds. They use their own build machine which is under their control. I want to run a modified build that goes against our branch in source code control. I have my own virtual machine. So I decided to configure it to perform my own builds. This turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it would. I am still fighting with the configuration to get the build script to run to completion.One requirement for the build machine is to have a certain version of WinZip, along with some configuration files used by WinZip. Luckily I had all the files needed for this version of WinZip. The build scripts assume that the correct version of WinZip is located at C:\Program Files\Winzip. I thought this would be no problem. I decided to move the existing copy of WinZip from there to another place. Then I would put the version needed by the build there. Even this simple task was hard to accomplish.
The system administrators of my workstation much have set it up to ensure that the version of WinZip that they expect is always located at C:\Program Files\WinZip. I tried to delete the files there. They were locked. I was able to temporarily rename the WinZip folder. However when I tried to copy my new version of WinZip to the right location, a WinZip install process immediately kicked off, restoring the wrong version of WinZip to that location.
This was very frustrating. I did not even know what secret process was protecting the installed version of WinZip. I found that I was able to cancel the automatic reinstall process each time it ran. Then I could sneak in the version that I wanted. However at every turn I had to keep canceling this job. This was very frustrating.
My next problem is that Ant is looking for a “tools.jar” file. It is missing. I think I have successfully installed Ant. This must be some Java install from Sun Microsystems. I tried installing the latest Sun JRE. I also tried to install the JDK. Any still keeps complaining about this. I am a Windows C++ developer. The build scripts were written by Java guys who have long since left the project. It looks like I am going to have to dig into this problem. I need my build.
