1. Prerequisites

• Git
• zsh as your terminal shell
• Ensure that your Visual Studio Code is installed in the Applications directory.

1.1. Setting Up Prerequisites - Git

Check you have Git installed by running the following command.

git --version

The expected output if it is installed should be similar to: (note that it doesn't need to identically match what is below, as long as you can see a version, it should be OK).

git version 2.39.3 (Apple Git-145)

If Git is not currently installed, you may get a pop-up asking you to install "command line developer tools". Follow the prompts in the pop-up to install Git.

Alternatively, you can run xcode-select --install in your terminal to install Git if the pop-up does not appear.

1.2. Setting Up Prerequisites - zsh

Check you are using zsh as your terminal shell. This is now the preferred terminal shell for MacOS.

You can check which shell you are running currently by running the following command:

echo $0

If the output includes zsh, then you can skip the rest of this section.

If your output includes bash, then run the following command to set your shell to zsh

chsh -s /bin/zsh

You can run the 1st command again to check if you are now using a zsh shell.

1.3. Setting Up Prerequisites - Visual Studio Code (VSCode)

If VSCode is not installed within the Applications folder, it may affect its ability to update and run the Java Extensions.

2. Installing Java JDK 17 On Your Machine

Ensure that you do not have younger or older versions of Java JDK on your machine. If you do, you will need to uninstall or setup your paths correctly.

You can check if you have a previous version of Java installed by opening a terminal and running the following command:

java --version

There are two main methods of installing Java JDK 17:

1. Adoptium
2. Homebrew

Follow the guide that best suites you.

2.1. Adoptium Method (Easier: Least amount of configuration)

Navigate to Latest Releases | Adoptium in your browser, and download and install the appropriate version of Java (see below).

• If you are using an ARM based Mac (M1 or M2), select the aarch64 architecture and download the respective .pkg file.
• If you are using an Intel based Mac, select the x64 architecture and download the respective .pkg file.

Now open the .pkg file you downloaded and follow the prompts to install Java.

You can verify the installation succeeded by checking the version using the command:

java --version

The output should look like the following (doesn't need to be identical. Most importantly needs to show Java 17)

openjdk 17.0.9 2023-10-17
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Temurin-17.0.9+9 (build 17.0.9+9)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Temurin-17.0.9+9 (build 17.0.9+9, mixed mode)

2.2. Homebrew Method

This section of the guide is mainly for those who have used Homebrew before. It is not necessary to install Java 17 using this method.

1. Install Homebrew by following the install commands listed here.

2. Follow the next steps at the end of the installation.

The next steps may look like (see red box). You will need to copy those commands and run them in the terminal.

3. Verify you have brew installed by running brew --version. This should display Homebrew's installed version.
4. Install Java 17 using brew by running brew install openjdk@17 (openjdk@17)
5. Copy and run the command at the end of the installation (see red box).

6. Reload your terminal configuration by running source ~/.zshrc. This will apply any changes made to the ~/.zshrc file in step 5.
7. Verify installation by running java --version.

The output should look like the following (doesn't need to be identical. Most importantly needs to show Java 17).

openjdk 17.0.9 2023-10-17
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Homebrew (build 17.0.9+0)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Homebrew (build 17.0.9+0, mixed mode, sharing)

3. Gradle 8.8 Installation

1. Download the Gradle zip file from here.

If you are using Safari, you will need to turn off automatic file unzipping. See How to stop Safari from unzipping files after download.

2. Check the zip file is in your downloads folder.

cd ~/Downloads
ls -la

If this is the first time your terminal is reading from your Downloads folder, you may get the following popup.

Click "OK" to allow the terminal to view the files inside your Downloads folder.

If you get the following output, you will need to configure permissions manually such that the terminal can read from your Downloads folder.

total 0
ls: .: Operation not permitted

Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access, add the Terminal application using the '+' button and allow it full disk access.

You can find the Terminal application by going to the Application folder and looking inside the Utilities folder.

After reopening your terminal, ls -la should be able to display all the files within ~/Downloads.

A file called gradle-8.8-bin.zip should exist in the output.

3. Run sudo mkdir -p /opt/gradle.

4. Run sudo unzip -d /opt/gradle gradle-8.8-bin.zip.

5. Check Gradle was successfully unzipped by running ls /opt/gradle/gradle-8.8.

The following output should be expected:

LICENSE	NOTICE	README	bin	init.d	lib

6. Now we need to add this Gradle installation to our path so we can use it in our terminal:

printf '\nexport PATH="$PATH:/opt/gradle/gradle-8.8/bin"\n' >> ~/.zshrc

7. Reload your terminal configuration by running source ~/.zshrc. This will apply any changes made to the ~/.zshrc file in step 6.
8. Verify installation by running gradle --version.

The following output is expected:

------------------------------------------------------------
Gradle 8.8
------------------------------------------------------------

Build time:   2024-05-31 21:46:56 UTC
Revision:     4bd1b3d3fc3f31db5a26eecb416a165b8cc36082

Kotlin:       1.9.22
Groovy:       3.0.21
Ant:          Apache Ant(TM) version 1.10.13 compiled on January 4 2023
JVM:          17.0.11 (Homebrew 17.0.11+0)
OS:           Mac OS X 14.5 aarch64

The most important things to note are Gradle 8.8 and JVM: 17.x.y.