This chapter explains how to install SpotBugs.

Extracting the Distribution

The easiest way to install SpotBugs is to download a binary distribution. Binary distributions are available in gzipped tar format and zip format. Once you have downloaded a binary distribution, extract it into a directory of your choice.

Extracting a gzipped tar format distribution:

$ gunzip -c spotbugs-4.8.5.tgz | tar xvf -

Extracting a zip format distribution:

C:\\Software\> unzip spotbugs\-4.8.5.zip

Usually, extracting a binary distribution will create a directory ending in spotbugs-4.8.5. For example, if you extracted the binary distribution from the C:\Software directory, then the SpotBugs software will be extracted into the directory C:\Software\spotbugs-4.8.5. This directory is the SpotBugs home directory. We’ll refer to it as $SPOTBUGS_HOME (or %SPOTBUGS_HOME% for Windows) throughout this manual.