issue with path containing spaces and ANT build.xml

We were getting random fails in Community sources ( 133.193, 137, others )  when we ran ANT on build.xml (build->all) despite the project itself making (build->make)  properly. The failure was early, just a minute or so, and  consistent with 5 errors being reported but the errors and stack traces  themselves were non-informative.

Since we were convinced that not that many builds could fail, we tried moving the release to a folder  just under C:\ , which resulted in the errors going away.


Previously we thought this had to do with the length of the paths, but it turns out it's an undocumented bug- there can be no space in the name of the path in which community is installed.

do this:

created a directory named:  a b  ( that is: aSPACEb)
install community.
try ANT build.
result: failure.

Community still makes nevertheless.

Haven't seen avoiding this as a requirement in building community using ANT. It seems like it has to do with some part of the build using  \  (windows backwards slash) instead of the file protocol / (forwards slash) when forming path names. Purely a guess. What we know is that if Community is installed in a directory with spaces in the absolute path name leading up to it, then ANT will fail when running build.xml

HTH