Greenfoot Installation

Windows:

Double-click the install file.

This will run a standard installation. Follow the instructions on screen. The installer will install the executable greenfoot.exe, and create a menu item in the Start menu. Execute this to run Greenfoot.

If you have more than one Java version installed, Greenfoot will let you select your preferred version the first time it is executed. This can be changed later by running the "vmselect" program, which will be installed into the same directory as Greenfoot.

We recommend that you copy the demo scenarios from the default location (C:\Greenfoot\scenarios) to a user-specific location for each user (e.g. ...\My Documents\scenarios). Working with scenarios will not work if the folder is write-protected.

Macintosh:

Double-click the zip file to uncompress (if your browser has not done this for you). Move the resulting folder to your preferred location (for example Applications).

Unix:

Make sure you have a suitable JDK or J2SDK. The Sun JDK/J2SDK is recommended as it is the most well tested. Currently the "gij" (GNU java interpreter) cannot be used.

Run the installer by executing (from the command shell):

/path/to/jdk/bin/java -jar Greenfoot-generic-156.jar

... where "/path/to/jdk" should be replaced by the actual path to the JDK.

Hint: if you have a suitable java binary in a directory listed in your PATH environment variable, you may be able to omit the "/path/to/jdk" above. Be careful that this does not run an incompatible java implementation (such as "gij") however! You can check if a Java implementation is in your path by runng "java -version".

In the installer, select an installation directory and your JDK directory and install. By default, the installer will install into a directory called "greenfoot" inside the directory from which you launch it, and it will pick up the JDK location automatically (if it is run correctly according to the instructions above).

In the directory where Greenfoot was installed, you will find a file named greenfoot. This is the launcher script. Execute this script to start Greenfoot. For example:

cd greenfoot # change into installation directory
./greenfoot # execute the "greenfoot" launcher script

Note: This installer can be executed on any system with Java 2 installed (including Windows and MacOS), but Windows/MacOS specific icons and configurations will not be present.

Optional: Remove the Installer

If you do not want to make further installations, you can now delete the installer file.

What now?

If you have any trouble with the installation, please read How to ask for help.

Several sample scenarios are installed in a folder called 'scenarios' with the standard greenfoot installation for you to play with. If you are new to greenfoot, you may like to start by reading the Tutorial.