Ant in Eclipse: javac1.8 class not found

If you are running ANT in Eclipse using Java 8. The error

Class not found: javac1.8

could happen. Because Apache Ant versions less than 1.9.0 - are not compatible with Java 8. The solution could be

• Option 1: Install Java 7 and set JAVA_HOME for eclipse to use Java 7.
• Option 2: Add compiler or build.compiler attribute to the javac task in your ant build.xml:

  <target name="compile">
      <javac srcdir="src" destdir="build/classes" source="1.6" target="1.6" compiler="javac1.7" >
          <classpath>
              <fileset dir="lib">
                  <include name="*.jar" />
              </fileset>
          </classpath>
      </javac>
  </target>

see also

• Compiler values in ANT javac task
• stackoverflow answer
• ANT bug report