Howto install and setup the Java 1.5 Beta Compiler

• 1) Goto Java 1.5.0 Beta 1
• 2) Click on DOWNLOAD under the SDK column
• 3) Accept the license agreement
• 4) Packages are available for both windows and linux. If you are using linux and have root access on your machine, you can install the rpm with the command 'rpm -i j2sdk-1_5_0-beta-linux-i586.rpm'. Otherwise, you will have to download the tarball and install it in a local directory.
• 5) Set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to you j2sdk1.5.0 install location. By default in linux this is /usr/java/j2sdk1.5.0.
• 6) Set your CLASSPATH environment variable to point to compiler.jar and any external jar files given with the project.

To compile a java program run 'javac -source 1.5 HelloWorld.java'

To run a java program run 'java HelloWorld'

If you would like to automate the compilation of your java code, the standard java mechanism for this is ant, not automake. RPMs are available at Jpackage.org

For more information about the DOT graphing program visit here or here (for rpms).

To learn more about java, read the appropriate tutorial. In general, the compiler requires only a basic knowledge of Java, since the only parts of the standard library that we use are java.lang.*, java.util.*, and java.io. To learn more about generics read this. This provides a high-level overview of the new features in java 1.5. Java generics are similar to C++ generics except that type variable information is not retained at runtime. There are several places in the compiler where such information is explicitly given through the Class class (see java.lang.Class).

Additional links:

• Java 1.5 Interview
• Java 1.5 Features Overview