I recommend you set the JAVA_HOME system environment variable. If you need a specific JDK, you can of course download that JDK from its website and install it instead.Īlright, now we've got everything installed, and we just need to let VSCode know where the JDK is located. So for most of you, just go ahead and install the latest stable OpenJDK version. If you use the Oracle JDK, you'll need to purchase a commercial license if you ever end up developing business software with it. I recommend you install the 'AdoptOpenJDK' because this option is free and open source. Now there are also different JDK implementations to choose from. Open the Command Palette (either View > Command Palette, or Ctrl+Shift+P) and search for 'Java: Configure Java Runtime'. So we can install the JDK from VSCode now that we have the Java extensions. If you install the JDK, that will include the 'Java Runtime Environment', so you don't need to install both. And then there's the JDK, which stands for 'Java Development Kit', which is what you need if you want to develop Java applications. There's the JRE, or 'Java Runtime Environment', which allows you to run Java applications on your computer or device.

There are two broad types of Java installation you'll hear about. Next you need to install the 'Java Development Kit' if you don't already have it, which you probably don't if you haven't installed Java before. The first step is to go to your extensions and find the 'Java Extension Pack', and install that. If you do already have VSCode installed, that's not a problem either. If you don't already have VSCode installed, you can save yourself a lot of time by downloading the Coding Pack for Java, which contains Visual Studio Code, the Java JDK, and all the essential Java extensions for VSCode.

Here we'll go through all the installation and setup steps to get you ready to work on your Java projects. This is a quick tutorial on how to get started with Java development on Windows using Visual Studio Code.

Java in visual studio code