2. Installation

Before developing an application with Web Server, it is essential to install Web Server, an Integrated Development Environment (IDE), and a build system integrated with Eclipse. The IDE used here is the Eclipse-based SpringSource Tool Suite (STS), and the build system used here is Apache Maven.

STS is supplied as a fully configured Eclipse IDE, with Virgo Web Server and Maven plugins built-in.

2.1 Pre-requisites

Before proceeding, ensure that a Java™ Standard Edition Development Kit (JDK) for Java 6 or later is installed and that the JAVA_HOME environment variable is set to the root directory of the JDK. (A Java Runtime Environment (JRE) alone is not sufficient, a development kit is necessary to use the facilities in STS.)

To verify this, issue the command "%JAVA_HOME%"\bin\java -version from a command prompt on Windows (or $JAVA_HOME/bin/java -version from a terminal window on UNIX) and ensure that the command completes successfully and reports a Java version 1.6.x (denoting Java 6) or greater.

Also issue the command "%JAVA_HOME%"\bin\jar to ensure that there is a means of extracting files from zip archives. If the jar command is unavailable, download and install a suitable zip program such as 7zip, gzip, or WinZip. This is most relevant for Windows operating systems where the inbuilt zip extraction utility may not handle long pathnames correctly.