Running the executable .jar file requires Java

A Java JRE installation is not necessary to run the Alchemy IDE, but it is necessary for running the executable .jar files. Currently Alchemy requires JRE 11+ to execute generated test files.

The best way to solve this is to install the GA (General Availability) version of OpenJDK. You can get it at https://openjdk.org/. The current version is 22.0.2 (as of this writing, August 26, 2024)

Windows Instructions:

Once you download it, extract the jdk-22.0.2 from the .zip (the folder name and path will be different if the version is different, but the steps are the same) and place it in an accessible location. I usually place it in

C:\Program Files\Java

just to make it easy to locate.

Once you have done that, you need to update your system environment variables with the path to this folder and also create a JAVA_HOME variable. The following steps may be slightly different based on your version of Windows, but the basic outcome is the same.

• Open Control Panel
• Click System and Security
• Click System
• Click Advanced system Settings
• Click Environment Variables
• In the System variables section, edit the path. Add the path to the bin folder of your new Java files. The path will look something like: "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-22.0.2\bin", depending on where you placed your files.
• In the System variables section, click on New
• For the Variable name, enter JAVA_HOME
• For the Variable value, enter the same path as above except leave off the "bin" part. "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-22.0.2\"
• Click on OK to accept all the changes.

To verify this configuration is working correctly, open a command prompt and enter the following command:

java -version

If the configuration is working you will get a message showing the installed version:

openjdk version "22.0.2" 2024-07-16

OpenJDK Runtime Environment (build 22.0.2+9-70)

OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (build 22.0.2+9-70, mixed mode, sharing)