System Requirements

To run JBoost in its simplest form, you need to have Java 1.5 (or better) installed. To run some of the auxiliary tools (which are very useful), you should also have Python, gnuplot, and Graphviz installed. Some of the tools may also use PERL, however we are trying to phase these out.

Installing

Installation is fairly simple. Download the file appropriate for your system (self extracting zip for windows, tgz for Linux, zip for Mac) and unzip the files.

Once you have unzipped the file, you should have a folder named jboost-*.*. Currently, JBoost works best when all files are left in their original position in the folder and subfolders.

Setting the CLASSPATH

Java relies on the system wide variable CLASSPATH. The CLASSPATH currently needs to be setup by the user. This will hopefully change in near future.

Windows

Here is a how-to for setting the classpath in windows. If JBOOST_DIR is the directory where jboost is installed, add the following paths JBOOST_DIR\dist\jboost.jar, JBOOST_DIR\lib\jfreechart-1.0.10.jar, and JBOOST_DIR\lib\jcommon-1.0.8.jar. These paths need to be separated by a semi-colon. For instance, jboost-2.0 used by Aaron Arvey on his desktop can be put onto the classpath by prepending the following text to the CLASSPATH environment variable

C:\DOCUME~1\AARON~1\desktop\jboost-2.0\dist\jboost.jar;
C:\DOCUME~1\AARON~1\desktop\jboost-2.0\lib\jfreechart-1.0.10.jar;
C:\DOCUME~1\AARON~1\desktop\jboost-2.0\lib\jcommon-1.0.8.jar;

Mac

Install via command line in same way as on Linux (see below).

Linux

There are three jar files that need to be in the classpath: dist/jboost.jar, lib/jfreechart-1.0.10.jar, and lib/jcommon-1.0.8.jar. To determine which command line shell you use, you can do echo $SHELL. To set the classpath in Linux FOR A SINGLE SESSION, you can do

or

To have the shell remember the classpath for FUTURE SESSIONS add the export/setenv lines (as shown above) into ~/.bashrc (bash) or ~/.zshrc (tcsh).

Tested Systems

We are currently in the process of verifying JBoost's ability to run on a variety of systems. In theory, it should be able to run on any system fulfilling the system requirements; but empirically we have shown that it works on the following systems:

• Linux with Java 1.6, Python 2.5.1, gnuplot 4.2.