Setting up BlueJ

To install BlueJ initially, follow the directions on the BlueJ website. You can also get BlueJ off the CD that came in the textbook, though I'd get the online version since it's guaranteed to be "fresh".

Getting the sample code. You'll want to get the book's sample projects. These are on the CD that came with the book or in CompSci/CS141 on the department filesystem (the one run by ITS, not the one on euclid).

Setting up submissions. To submit programs, you'll be using a special submission extension of BlueJ. In order to configure this, you need to open the preferences dialog on BlueJ; it appears in the BlueJ menu on a Mac and in the Tools menu on the Windows version. (If you use Linux, find the preferences option and let me know where it is so I can complete these directions...) Select the Preferences tab. Then fill in the following fields of the Submitter box:

If you are using BlueJ from off campus, you'll have to use the server name provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). In the information they provide about how to use their service, they likely gave you the name of an SMTP server. If you have any questions or problems, let me know.

To set up submissions on your own machine, you'll also need to put the file submission.defs into an appropriate folder on that machine. On a Mac, open the BlueJ application (right click on it and select "Show package contents", which does NOT start BlueJ) and then put it into Contents/Resources/Java. On a PC, open the BlueJ folder and put it into lib. You'll need to restart BlueJ for this change to take effect.

Getting simplified template files. Although not strictly required, you may also want to update the class templates that BlueJ uses to match what appears on my computer and the lab machines. (The default versions that come with BlueJ contain a bunch of comments and some sample code.) To do this, you open the same folder in which you placed submission.defs (i.e. either Contents/Resources/Java or lib). Then open english/templates/newclass. Replace the files abstract.tmpl, enum.tmpl, interface.tmpl, stdclass.tmpl, and unittest.tmpl. Once again, the changes won't take effect until you restart BlueJ.