Operating Systems and Java Versions

• Windows
• Unix
• Mac OS X
• VMS

jEdit 4.3 recommends Sun's JDK 1.5.0 or later.

Note: jEdit has not been tested on OpenJDK, gnu-gcj, or IBM Java, or other Java platforms. Your mileage may vary if you try using anything other than Sun or Apple Java.

jEdit 4.2 is the last release to support Java 1.3 or 1.4.

Windows

Sun provides a 1.5 VM for Windows.

Linux / Unix

Sun provides a 1.5 VM for Linux and Solaris. These are the recommended versions.

IBM provides a 1.5 VM for Linux, AIX, and OS/390.

Some Linux distributions (Debian, Ubuntu) make available in the "non-free" section of their repository packages like sun-java5-jdk. It may be installed in /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun. It is possible an older/different version of java is found first in your PATH. Therefore, it is important to choose the correct "default" version of java.

sh-3.1$ which java
/usr/bin/java
sh-3.1$ java -version
Oops, we don't want this version...
java version "1.4.2_11"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_11-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_11-b06, mixed mode)
sh-3.1$ sudo apt-get install sun-java5-jdk # or sun-java6-jdk

Maybe it is already installed but not set up as the default java. To change the default version of java at any time, use update-alternatives.

$ sudo update-alternatives --config java
There are 4 alternatives which provide `java'.

  Selection    Alternative
-----------------------------------------------
          1    /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java
          2    /usr/bin/gij-wrapper-4.1
 +        3    /usr/lib/jvm/java-gcj/jre/bin/java
*         4    /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

See this howto for more details about java alternatives.

Mac OS X

Mac OS X 10.4.8 and later has JDK 1.5 included with the operating system. Since older versions are also installed, it is important that you set your PATH and JAVA_HOME environment variables to point to the correct version.

The OS/X dmg installer includes the "Mac OSX Plugin" which is only needed if you are using Java 1.5. If you have Java 1.6 as your default JVM, you will need to remove the Mac OSX plugin for jEdit to work properly.

VMS

Java virtual machines for VMS on Alpha can be downloaded from HP; be sure to get the Java 1.5 version, and read and follow instructions about supported VMS versions and patches.