BlueJ Installation on Windows|BlueJ Installation Problems|BlueJ Installation Requirements

BlueJ Installation

BlueJ is distributed in three different formats: one for Windows systems, one for MacOS, and one for all other systems. Installing it is quite straightforward.

Prerequisites

You must have J2SE v1.4 (a.k.a. JDK 1.4) or later installed on your system to use BlueJ. Generally, updating to the latest stable (non-beta) Java release is recommended. If you do not have JDK installed you can download it from Sun’s web site at http://java.sun.com/j2se /. On MacOS X, a recent J2SE version is preinstalled - you do not need to install it yourself. If you find a download page that offers “JRE” (Java Runtime Environment) and “SDK” (Software Development Kit), you must download “SDK” – the JRE is not sufficient.

BlueJ Installation on Windows

The distribution file for Windows systems is called bluejsetup-xxx.exe, where xxx is a version number. For example, the BlueJ version 2.0.0 distribution is named bluejsetup-200.exe. You might get this file on disk, or you can download it from the BlueJ web site at http://www.bluej.org. Execute this installer. The installer lets you select a directory to install to. It will also offer the option of installing a shortcut in the start menu and on the desktop. After installation is finished, you will find the program bluej.exe in BlueJ’s installation directory.

The first time you launch BlueJ, it will search for a Java system (JDK). If it finds more than one suitable Java system (e.g. you have JDK 1.4.2 and JDK 1.5.0 installed), a dialog will let you select which one to use. If it does not find one, you will be asked to locate it yourself (this can happen when a JDK system has been installed, but the corresponding registry entries have been removed). The BlueJ installer also installs a program called vmselect.exe. Using this program, you can later change which Java version BlueJ uses. Execute vmselect to start BlueJ with a different Java version.

The choice of JDK is stored for each BlueJ version. If you have different versions of BlueJ installed, you can use one version of BlueJ with JDK 1.4.2 and another BlueJ version with JDK 1.5. Changing the Java version for BlueJ will make this change for all BlueJ installations of the same version for the same user.