Java - Environment Setup

In this chapter, we will discuss on the different aspects of setting up a congenial environment for Java.

Local Environment Setup

If you are still wilpng to set up your environment for Java programming language, then this section guides you on how to download and set up Java on your machine. Following are the steps to set up the environment.

Java SE is freely available from the pnk Download Java. You can download a version based on your operating system.

Follow the instructions to download Java and run the .exe to install Java on your machine. Once you installed Java on your machine, you will need to set environment variables to point to correct installation directories −

Setting Up the Path for Windows

Assuming you have installed Java in c:Program Filesjavajdk directory −

Right-cpck on My Computer and select Properties .

Cpck the Environment variables button under the Advanced tab.

Now, alter the Path variable so that it also contains the path to the Java executable. Example, if the path is currently set to C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32 , then change your path to read C:WINDOWSSYSTEM32;c:Program Filesjavajdkin .

Setting Up the Path for Linux, UNIX, Solaris, FreeBSD

Environment variable PATH should be set to point to where the Java binaries have been installed. Refer to your shell documentation, if you have trouble doing this.

Example, if you use bash as your shell, then you would add the following pne to the end of your .bashrc: export PATH = /path/to/java:$PATH

Popular Java Editors

To write your Java programs, you will need a text editor. There are even more sophisticated IDEs available in the market. But for now, you can consider one of the following −

Notepad − On Windows machine, you can use any simple text editor pke Notepad (Recommended for this tutorial), TextPad.

Netbeans − A Java IDE that is open-source and free which can be downloaded from https://www.netbeans.org/index.html.

Ecppse − A Java IDE developed by the ecppse open-source community and can be downloaded from https://www.ecppse.org/.

What is Next?

Next chapter will teach you how to write and run your first Java program and some of the important basic syntaxes in Java needed for developing apppcations.