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jGRASP is a freeware development tool for writing Java programs that was specifically designed for educational use. This page describes how to install jGRASP and get started with using it.
Before you can install jGRASP, you must install a Java JDK. We will be using release 1.4.1 of the Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) development kit. The steps below tell you how to install this programming environment along with jGRASP. There are roughly two parts to this installation. The first part is installing the Java development kit (JDK) on the computer and the second part is installing jGRASP.
- Step 1:
- If you do not have the program WinZip already installed on your home computer, then you should install it first. Download the Windows version from the WinZip Download Page; follow the instructions on that page to install WinZip.
- Step 2:
- Install Sun's JDK 1.4.1. Use the link at the end of this paragraph to go to Sun's download page. You want to download the "Windows (all languages, including English) SDK" that is second from the top under the heading "Download J2SE v 1.4.1_04". That will take you to a page where you can download an installation program. The JDK 1.4.1 installer is 36 MB, so expect the download to take several hours using a modem. To install the JDK, follow the installation instructions from Sun's web pages. (It is probably a good idea to print out these instructions before installing the JDK.)
Sun's JDK 1.4.1 download page
- Step 2.5 (Optional):
- The JDK does not come with any documentation. If you want the HTML version of the documentation, then you need to install that separately. But the HTML version of the documentation is large (about 180MB installed) and not easy to use. Later in this page I will show you a better version of the documentation to install. But if you want the HTML version, read on.
The HTML version of the documentation comes in a zip file (that's why you need WinZip) called j2sdk-1_4_1-doc.zip. Download this file from the link at the end of this paragraph. Unzip the zip file into a temporary directory. The temporary directory will contain a sub-directory called docs. Move the docs directory to be a sub-directoy of the directory C:\j2sdk1.4.1_04 which was created by the installer in the previous step (the last two digits in this directory name are the "version number" of the JDK).
Sun's JDK 1.4.1 HTML documentation download
Sun's JDK 1.4.1 Documentation Installation Instructions
- Step 3:
- If you want to, you can test your JDK installation. Use the Start Menu to start up a "Command Prompt" window. At the command prompt, enter the following command.
c:\j2sdk1.4.1_04\bin\javac
You should get a "usage message" back from the Java compiler. Now download this Hello.java file. At the command prompt, use the cd command to move to the directory where you stored the file Hello.java. Compile Hello.java with the following command.
c:\j2sdk1.4.1_04\bin\javac Hello.java
After the program compiles, run the program with the next command.
c:\j2sdk1.4.1_04\bin\java Hello
- Step 3.5 (Optional):
- In the last step we used the "full path name",
c:\j2sdk1.4.1_04\bin\javac, at the command prompt for the Java compiler javac (and similarly for the Java virtual machine, java). If you want to work with Java from the command prompt, using full path names can be inconvenient. So you may want to set the Windows PATH variable to include the Java JDK. How to do this is explained in Step 5 of Sun's installation instructions. If you do not want to use the command prompt, then this step is not needed (and setting the PATH variable is not needed for any of the following steps).
- Step 4: Download jGRASP version 1.6.0. Use the link at the end of this paragraph to go to the jGRASP download page. Click on the download button labelled "jGRASP exe: Windows self-extracting exe (2,275,371 bytes)".
jGRASP Download page
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- Step 5: Install jGRASP by double clicking on the installer that you downloaded in the last step.
Step 6: Test jGRASP by downloading and then double clicking on the file Hello.java. The jGRASP installer associates java files with jGRASP, so double clicking on the file Hello.java should open the file in jGRASP.
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