Installation

To install Relaxer, you must of course first download it. Follow these steps to do so:

1. Create a working directory, such as C:\Relaxer
2. From your web browser, go to http://www.relaxer.org. This link redirects you to the Relaxer web site.
3. Click on the Download link
4. Near the top of the Download page, you will find a link to setup.zip This archive contains all the files you need to install the latest version of Relaxer (beta version 1.0RC at the time of this writing). Click on setup.zip.
5. Save setup.zip in your working directory.

After you have successfully downloaded Relaxer, install it by issuing the following command, assuming that your working directory is C:\Relaxer and that you are working on a Windows platform:

C:\Relaxer>java -jar setup.zip

After giving this command, the setup program asks you some configuration questions. First it asks where you would like to install Relaxer library (JAR) files:

Install directory [default: C:\usr\local\lib\relaxer]:

You can press Enter to accept the default, or you might prefer to just use your working directory, as shown:

Install directory [default: C:\usr\local\lib\relaxer]: c:\relaxer

Next, setup asks where you want to install the executable or binary files:

Install directory [default: C:\usr\local\bin]: 

Again, you can accept the default or use the working directory:

Install directory [default: C:\usr\local\bin]: c:\relaxer

Once you have set the directory names, setup asks you to confirm that you want to install Relaxer:

[Configuration]
Install directory = C:\relaxer
Command directory = C:\relaxer

Type "yes" to install, "no" to re-enter, "exit" to exit
>

If you enter no, you have a chance to change the directory names before proceeding with the installation. If you enter exit, setup aborts the installation. If you enter yes, setup extracts all the necessary files from archive.jar in setup.zip into the directories you have specified. This process takes a minute or so.

 
Extract archives...
Generate script...
  script = c:\relaxer\relaxer.bat
  script = c:\relaxer\relaxer
Done.

The batch file relaxer.bat (or the relaxer shell script on Unix) provides an easy way to run Relaxer from the command line. The batch file has only two lines:

@echo off
java -jar C:\relaxer\Relaxer.jar %1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9

As you can see, the batch program uses an absolute path to Relaxer.jar and provides nine replaceable parameters for command-line arguments. If you are running Windows 2000 or XP, you can replace %1 through %9 with %*, if you wish (%* replaces any number of parameters, just as $* does in a Unix shell script):

@echo off
java -jar C:\relaxer\Relaxer.jar %*

In addition, you can place your working directory in the path environment variable so that you can execute the batch file from anywhere on your system. On Windows, you could issue the following command:

C:\Relaxer> path %path%;c:\relaxer

This command appends C:\Relaxer to the current path variable. You could also do this by adding a path command to your autoexec.bat file, or you can add it by setting Environment Variables on the Advanced tab under System on the Control Panel.

By the way, Relaxer finds classpaths quietly, relative to its path, without requiring you to specify them explicitly—except under rare circumstances, such as with the JDBC example at the end of this tutorial.

Now that you have things set up, you are ready to start putting Relaxer to work.