I just installed Java Developer and now I do not know how to run it

I just installed Java Developer on Windows Vista. The installation process looked OK and it was successfuly finished. However, I do not开发者_如何学C know how I cun run this program? Nothing new on the desctop appeared?

First of all it is important to note that the Java Development Kit (JDK) is not a GUI tools such as Visual Studio. It consists mainly of pure command-line tools used to compile, run and debug Java code.

There are IDEs (Integrated Development Environment) which provide the entire Editor/Compiler/Build-System integrated in one big setup, but in my opinion the very first steps should be done with the pure JDK.

Start with this intial Java tutorial.

Generally The Really Big Index should keep you occupied for quite some time.

Fetch yourself a development environment like Eclipse: http://www.eclipse.org/ and start playing around.

The JDK is just that: a software development kit, sitting around in a directory specified by you and waiting for you to invoke its command line tools ...

If by "Java Developer" you mean the Java Development Kit (JDK), then you "run" it via the command line - use javac to compile and java or javaw to run the compiled classes.

If you mean you installed the JDK—the Java development kit—then this is just the Java compiler and the sources of the class library (roughly). You can then go ahead, create Java programs in any text editor and compile them.

But you probably want an IDE, such as Eclipse.

Go to Command Prompt. In the command prompt go to the directory where the Java program is located. In the command line type "java name_of_the_program.java". It will generate name_of_the_program.class. After that you can type (in the command line) "javac name_of_the_program" and the program will be executed.

It is how it should be in theory. But in practice it will not work. To make it work you have to find your java-directory (a directory where "javac.exe" is located). In my case it was "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_18". Then you have to create 4 new environment variables (classpath, include, lib, path) and set them to be equal to the name of the above mentioned directory. After that you need to restart your computer and after that will be able to compile your progam (by typing "javac name_of_the_program.java").

But of couse it is not the end of the story. If you type "java name_of_the_program" the program will not be executed. Java will write you that it is cannot find the main class. How to solve this problem I do not know yet.