Prerequisites

Before writing any codes, please install the latest JDK 8, Apache Maven, and your favorate IDE.

Java 8

Oracle Java 8 is recommended. For Windows user, just go to Oracle Java website to download it and install into your system. Redhat has just released a OpenJDK 8 for Windows user at DevNation 2016, if you are stick on the OpenJDK, go to Redhat Developers website and get it.

Most of the Linux distributions includes the OpenJDK, install it via the Linux package manager.

Optionally, you can set JAVA_HOME environment variable and add <JDK installation dir>/bin in your PATH environment variable.

Type this command in system terminal to verify your Java environment installed correctly.

#java -version
java version "1.8.0_102"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_102-b14)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.102-b14, mixed mode)

Apache Maven

Download the latest Apache Maven from http://maven.apache.org, and uncompress it into your local system.

Optionally, you can set M2_HOME environment varible, and also do not forget to append <Maven Installation dir>/bin your PATH environment variable.

Type the following command to verify Apache Maven is working.

#mvn -v
Apache Maven 3.3.9 (bb52d8502b132ec0a5a3f4c09453c07478323dc5; 2015-11-11T00:41:47+08:00)
Maven home: D:\build\maven
Java version: 1.8.0_102, vendor: Oracle Corporation
Java home: D:\jdk8\jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: Cp1252
OS name: "windows 10", version: "10.0", arch: "amd64", family: "dos"

If you are a Gradle fan, you can use Gradle as build tool. Gradle could be an alternative of Apache Maven.

Spring ToolSuite

Spring Tool Suite is an Eclipse based IDE, and provides a lot of built-in Spring supports, it is highly recommended for new Spring users.

Go to Spring official site, download a copy of Spring Tool Suite. At the moment, the latest version is 3.8.

Extract the files into your local disk. Go to root folder, there is STS.exe file, double click it and starts up Spring Tool Suite.

You can select your favorate IDEs, such as NetBeans, Intellij IDEA etc. All of these have good Maven and Gradle support.

In the next posts, let's try to create a project skeleton for our blog sample application.