Building the Source

Using configure and make

This is the recommended build system on Unix platforms. On Windows, you are more likely to succeed with Ant; see below.

For Linux:

    $ ./configure --with-jdk=DIR
    $ make
    $ make install

The --with-jdk option is always required, in order to specify which JDK to use (give the full path of its top-level directory).

On Mac OS X, the --with-jdk option should be specified like this:

    --with-jdk=/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework

You can use the --with-extensions option to specify extensions to the CLASSPATH. For example, you may want to build j with support for an external XML parser:

    $ ./configure ... --with-extensions=/usr/share/java/xerces.jar

Extensions specified in this way are added to the CLASSPATH both during the build process and at runtime.

If you want to use certain experimental features such as shell and ssh buffers, you should specify the --enable-jpty option (you will also need to set enableExperimentalFeatures=true in your preferences file).

By default, j will be installed in /usr/local/bin.

After you've built and installed j, you should be able to invoke it from the command line by just typing

$ j

if /usr/local/bin is in your path.

Using Ant

Ant is the recommended build system on Windows. Version 1.4.1 or later of Ant is required.

Change into the root directory of the j source distribution and edit the file build.properties to suit your situation. Then:

    C:\j-0.21.0> ant all

This will build j.jar and generate a batch file, j.bat, that you can use to launch j.