Liferay ant deploy failure - ant

Question

I have been having trouble deploying liferay portlets and themes from the command line with ant deploy;
sample execution:
pwd: C:\liferay-plugins-sdk\themes
create.bat deep-blue "Deep Blue"
cd deep-blue-theme
ant deploy
-> Buildfile: C:\liferay-plugins-sdk\themes\deep-blue-theme\build.xml
-> compile:
-> BUILD FAILED
-> C:\liferay-plugins-stk\themes\build-common-theme.xml:172: C:\liferay-plugins-sdk\themes\deep-blue-theme\liferay-portal-6.0.6 omcat-6.0.29webappsROOT\html\themes_unstyled does not exist.
the problem appears to be with the bold section and how the path is obviously incorrect; where is this directory being set?
edit:
the problem was my app.server.dir in build.{username}.properties

Answer 1

The error is a result of the ant build not being able to find a Liferay installation (which contains items needed by the SDK).
By default, the build properties in the SDK are set up on the assumption that your setup looks like this:
- Your Development Directory
- bundles
- data
- deploy
- license
- tomcat-6.0.29
- liferay-plugins-sdk
Where bundles contains a Liferay bundle distribution, including the bundled Tomcat server.
You can see this setup in the build.properties file at the root level of your SDK.
#
# Specify the paths to an unzipped Tomcat bundle.
#
app.server.type=tomcat
app.server.dir=${project.dir}/../bundles/tomcat-6.0.29
app.server.deploy.dir=${app.server.dir}/webapps
app.server.lib.global.dir=${app.server.dir}/lib/ext
app.server.portal.dir=${app.server.dir}/webapps/ROOT
The recommended way to change this is not to edit this section of build.properties, but to create overriding entries in a new file, called build.username.properties. (where username is your user name on your computer account).

Answer 2

As you say in the comment to kirkz's answer, you have already set your build.connor.properties: You obviously have used backslash in there. Here \t is short for the tab character. This explains what you see: ...liferay-portal-6.0.6 omcat... (there's a tab between 6.0.6 and omcat)
Do only use forward-slash in properties files (when you refer to file names, no matter if you're on windows or on any other platforms)

Answer 3

I think to solve this issue just for now. To check weather you are getting unsuccessful build or not you can try this solution:
I have just used the static liferay path in this solution.
<elseif>
<equals arg1="${theme.parent}" arg2="classic" />
<then>
<copy todir="docroot" overwrite="true">
<fileset
dir="C:/Liferay/liferay-portal-6.2-ce-ga2/tomcat-7.0.42/webapps/ROOT/html/themes/classic"
excludes="_diffs/**,templates/**"
/>
</copy>
<copy todir="docroot/templates" overwrite="true">
<fileset
dir="C:/Liferay/liferay-portal-6.2-ce-ga2/tomcat-7.0.42/webapps/ROOT/html/themes/classic/templates"
includes="*.${theme.type}"
/>
</copy>
</then>
</elseif>
After setting up this code in your build-common-theme.xml file you will NOT get omcat-6.0.29webappsROOT\html\themes_unstyled error at least.