DrJava Resources

What is DrJava?

DrJava is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed at Rice University for writing Java programs.  It was designed primarily for students, providing an intuitive interface and the ability to interactively evaluate Java code. It also includes powerful features for more advanced users, such as a full-featured debugger.

Installation

1. Install or upgrade to J2SE 5.0 before installing DrJava.  See the Course Info page for instructions.
2. Download DrJava from http://www.drjava.org. Get the latest (beta) version for your platform. You can download DrJava as a platform-independent .jar file or an executable file for your platform.  If you get a dialog saying something about a JAR archive security check, right-click on the DrJava download link and select Save Link As... (or the equivalent in your browser).
3. Place the DrJava .jar file or executable in a convenient location and set a shortcut to it on your desktop.

Running

Refer to the DrJava page for instructions on running DrJava on your platform. . Normally, you can just double-click on the shortcut to the .jar file or executable you downloaded.

A Common Problem: Finding tools.jar

When you run DrJava the first time, you may get the following message:

DrJava cannot find the Java SDK’s ‘tools.jar’ file.  This file is necessary to compile files and use the debugger.  It is generally located in the ‘lib’ subdirectory of your Java installation directory. Would you like to specify its location?  (If you say ‘No’, DrJava might be unable to compile or debug programs.)

Click "yes" on the dialog box, navigate to the lib subdirectory of the Java installation directory (on my Windows XP machine, C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_01\lib\), and select tools.jar.