how to install ANT in ubuntu 14.04

The file apache-ant-1.9.4-bin.tar.gz is not installable package. A installable package ends with .deb.

You can install ant via the package manager.

But first you have to fix a bug in your system:

Open a terminal and run this command

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Remove the line (line 2)

sudo apt-get install python-software-properties$

and in line 35 and 36 add a # at the beginning of the line:

# This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party
# developers who want to ship their latest software.

and remove all the $ from your sources.list

Then run the command:

sudo apt-get update

Then install ant:

sudo apt-get install ant

Simply: sudo apt-get install ant

If you need a newer version then you have to extract the .tar.gz you downloaded to somewhere and run ant from there.

tar xzvf apache-ant-1.9.4-bin.tar.gz extracts the archive. It's basically just a ZIP-archive. You can extract it also graphically from the file browser.