Apache: The Definitive Guide, 3rd Edition

Installing the JDK

First, you need a Java Development Kit (JDK). We downloaded jdk1.1.8 for FreeBSD^[1] from http://java.sun.com and installed it. Another source is ftp://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/local-distfiles/nate/JDK1.1/jdk1.1.8_ELF.V1999-11-9.tar.gz. Installation is simple: you just unzip the tarball and then extract the files. If you read the README without paying close attention, you may get the impression that you need to unzip the src.zip file — you do not, unless you want to read the source code of the Java components. And, of course, you absolutely must not unzip classes.zip.

An essential step that may not be very clear from the documentation is to include the JDK, at ..../usr/src/java/jdk1.1.8/bin on your path, to set the environment variable CLASSPATH to /usr/src/java/jdk1.1.8/lib/classes.zip and to add the current directory to the path if it isn’t already there.

Make sure that the directory names correspond with the situation on your machine and log in again to get it to work. A simple test to see whether you’ve got it all together is to write yourself a “hullo world” program:

public class hw
    {
    public static void main(String[] args)
        {
        System.out.println("Hello World");
        }
    }

Save it with the same name as the public class and the .java extension: hw.java. Compile it with:

javac hw.java

and run it with:

java hw

If Hello World appears on the screen, all is well.

^[1] This is the version of Unix we use — you would download the version appropriate to your OS.