Steps for First Time Setup

1. Install Development Tools

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Windows

On Windows, you'll need Cygwin, a Java JDK, and ant.

Cygwin is downloadable from http://www.cygwin.com/ or specifically: http://www.cygwin.com/setup.exe

In the Cygwin setup configuration select the packages:

• git - used for version control
• make, gcc-mingw, and g++ - used to build arduino.exe (this will also pull in gcc-core)
• perl - use this version, activestate or other distros have trouble
• unzip, zip - for dealing with archives

Included in the defaults, but make sure:

• coreutils (or textutils), gzip, tar Not required but useful:
• openssh - command line ssh client
• nano - handy/simple text editor

And be sure to leave the option selected for 'unix line endings'

Download and install ant. Add the apache-ant-xxx\bin directory to your path.

Download and install a Java JDK.

Point the JAVA_HOME environment variable to the JDK root directory. An error message that reads "Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\lib\tools.jar" means you need to set JAVA_HOME to your JDK (not JRE) installation.

When building on a 64 bit version of Windows, you must still use the 32 bit JDK. If you have both the 32 and 64 bit JDK's installed, ensure JAVA_HOME is set to the 32 bit version.

Mac OS X

On Mac OS X, install Apple's Developer Tools and git.

Linux

On Linux, you need the Sun Java SDK, avr-gcc, avr-g++, avr-libc, make, ant, and git.

2. Build from Source

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this grabs the code from GitHub as an anonymous user.

# grab the code, it'll take a while (maybe even a long while for you dialup and international folks)
git clone git://github.com/arduino/Arduino.git

Build It

Use the command line.

cd /path/to/arduino/build
ant

# if everything went well, you'll have no errors. (feel free to make
# suggestions for things to include here for common problems)
# then to run it
ant run

# each time you make a change, use ant to build the thing
# and run to get it up and running.
Updating to the Latest Version
Each time you want to update to latest version from git:

cd /path/to/arduino
git pull
git update

If new folders have been added, or you're getting odd errors, use:
ant clean

Build for other platforms

You can do the build for other platforms using:

ant clean dist -Dplatform=windows

ant clean dist -Dplatform=macosx

ant clean dist -Dplatform=macosx-java-latest