Careeroza

Tools Setup

What You Need

ToolWhyGet it
JDK 17 or 21compile and run JavaEclipse Temurin (adoptium.net) or Oracle JDK
IDEwrite, run and debug codeIntelliJ IDEA Community (free) or VS Code + "Extension Pack for Java" + "Spring Boot Extension Pack"
Maven or Gradlebuild tool (downloads libraries, builds the jar)not required to install: projects ship with a wrapper (mvnw / gradlew)
Postmansend HTTP requests to your APIpostman.com (or use curl in a terminal)
Gitversion controlgit-scm.com

Check Your Installation

Example

Open a terminal (Command Prompt, PowerShell or a Linux/Mac shell) and check Java and, if installed, Maven:

java -version
mvn -v

Example output

openjdk version "21.0.4" 2024-07-16 LTS
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Temurin-21.0.4+7 (build 21.0.4+7-LTS)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Temurin-21.0.4+7 (build 21.0.4+7-LTS, mixed mode, sharing)

Apache Maven 3.9.9
Maven home: C:\tools\apache-maven-3.9.9
Java version: 21.0.4, vendor: Eclipse Adoptium

Tip: If java is "not recognized", set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to the JDK folder and add %JAVA_HOME%\bin (Windows) or $JAVA_HOME/bin (Linux/Mac) to PATH, then open a new terminal.

Is My Java New Enough?

Example

Spring Boot 3 needs Java 17+. This small program checks the running Java version:

public class Main {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        int feature = Runtime.version().feature();     // 17, 21, ...
        boolean ok = feature >= 17;
        System.out.println("Java 17 or newer: " + ok);
        System.out.println(ok ? "Ready for Spring Boot 3" : "Please install JDK 17 or 21");
    }
}

Output

Java 17 or newer: true
Ready for Spring Boot 3