POI 3.5 and later requires the JDK version 1.5 or later. Versions prior to 3.5 require JDK 1.4+
The POI build system requires Apache Ant
Specifically the build has been tested to work with Ant version 1.7.1. To install the product download the distribution and follow the instructions.
Remember to set the ANT_HOME environment variable and add ANT_HOME/bin to your shell's PATH.
Running unit tests and building a distribution requires JUnit.
Just pick the latest versions of the jars from SourceForge and place them in ANT_HOME/lib. Make sure that optional.jar is in ANT_HOME/lib.
The POI build system requires Apache Forrest to build the documentation.
Specifically the build has been tested to work with Forrest 0.5. This is an old release which is available here.
Remember to set the FORREST_HOME environment variable.
The main targets of interest to our users are:
| Ant Target | Description |
|---|---|
| clean | Erase all build work products (ie. everything in the build directory |
| compile | Compiles all files from main, contrib and scratchpad |
| test | Run all unit tests from main, ooxml, contrib and scratchpad |
| jar | Produce jar files |
| assemble | Produce .zip and tar.gz distribution packages |
| docs | Generate all documentation (Requires Apache Forrest) |