Building android project from jenkins under linux - build fails, cannot find imported build.xml

Question

I'm trying to build simple android project from Jenkins, but build fails with output message (verbose):

Building in workspace /var/lib/jenkins/jobs/MyProj/workspace
[MyProj] $ ant -file build.xml help -v
Apache Ant version 1.8.1 compiled on October 13 2010
Buildfile: /home/ramps/MyProj/build.xml
Detected Java version: 1.6 in: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre
Detected OS: Linux
parsing buildfile /home/ramps/MyProj/build.xml with URI = file:/home/ramps/MyProj/build.xml
Project base dir set to: /home/ramps/MyProj
parsing buildfile jar:file:/usr/share/ant/lib/ant.jar!/org/apache/tools/ant/antlib.xml with URI = jar:file:/usr/share/ant/lib/ant.jar!/org/apache/tools/ant/antlib.xml from a zip file
 [property] Loading /home/ramps/MyProj/local.properties
 [property] Loading /home/ramps/MyProj/ant.properties
Importing file /home/ramps/MyProj/custom_rules.xml from /home/ramps/MyProj/build.xml
Cannot find /home/ramps/MyProj/custom_rules.xml imported from /home/ramps/MyProj/build.xml
Importing file /usr/share/android-sdk-linux/tools/ant/build.xml from /home/ramps/MyProj/build.xml

BUILD FAILED
/home/ramps/MyProj/build.xml:81: Cannot find /usr/share/android-sdk-linux/tools/ant/build.xml imported from /home/ramps/MyProj/build.xml
    at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.ImportTask.importResource(ImportTask.java:181)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.taskdefs.ImportTask.execute(ImportTask.java:162)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.UnknownElement.execute(UnknownElement.java:291)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:616)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.dispatch.DispatchUtils.execute(DispatchUtils.java:106)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.Task.perform(Task.java:348)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.Target.execute(Target.java:390)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.helper.ProjectHelper2.parse(ProjectHelper2.java:179)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.ProjectHelper.configureProject(ProjectHelper.java:82)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.runBuild(Main.java:786)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.Main.startAnt(Main.java:218)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.run(Launcher.java:280)
    at org.apache.tools.ant.launch.Launcher.main(Launcher.java:109)

Total time: 0 seconds
Build step 'Invoke Ant' marked build as failure
Finished: FAILURE

• MyProj is a clean project created via:

  android create project --name MyProj --package com.myproj --target "android-15" --path MyProj --activity MyProj

• of course file "/usr/share/android-sdk-linux/tools/ant/build.xml" exist.

• "ant help" from shell runs fine.

• local.properties contains valid path to android SDK:

  sdk.dir=/usr/share/android-sdk-linux

Any idea why MyProj/build.xml cannot find "/usr/share/android-sdk-linux/tools/ant/build.xml" ?

Answer 1

Ok, I managed to solve it. User jenkins had no permission to enter android-sdk-linux folder.

In general, when debugging such issues it is very helpful to try to do manually what Jenkins is doing:

$sudo su jenkins

And now, as jenkins user try to enter folders, create new one etc.