JR: Windows-specific Instructions

Basically, installation follows the standard Instructions for Downloading and Installing JR and translating and execution follows the standard Instructions for JR program translation and execution. We hope the differences will be fairly obvious. But, here are the key Windows-specific details you'll need to know.

tested on Windows XP systems and Windows NT systems; not likely to work on Windows 9x systems.

the simplest way to install JR is to use the installer program (you must be running from a privileged account, i.e., one that is "Computer Administrator", not "Limited"):

after unzipping the JR zip file, change to that directory and simply run setup.exe. It will present a series of dialog boxes that allow you to guide the installation.
the installer program will automatically set the environment variables JR_HOME, JRSH, and JRSHC.
you will need to set or modify the environment variables CLASSPATH and PATH:

set the CLASSPATH environment variable as indicated on Instructions for JR program translation and execution. Don't include the double quotes as shown for the UNIX variables. Windows handles spaces in names.

include the value of %JR_HOME%\bin in the Path variable (not necessary, but convenient). (The value of %JR_HOME% is the directory in which you installed JR.)

the DISPLAY environment variable does not need to be set for Windows.
to uninstall JR, run setup.exe again and choose "remove", or go through the Windows' control panel and use the "Add/Remove Programs" panel.

JR_HOME as indicated on Instructions for JR program translation and execution. Don't include the double quotes as shown for the UNIX variables. Windows handles spaces in names.

Right click on the My Computer icon that should be on the desktop or in the Start Menu.

System Variables: this requires that you have administrator rights; the change will apply to all users. Note that multi-VM JR programs require the use of rsh. The rsh mentioned below (perhaps others too) requires these JR environment variables to be System Variables; we've observed that the system must be rebooted before the changes take effect from rsh's perspective.
User Variables: otherwise (but multi-VM JR programs won't work).

In our tests, we used http://www.denicomp.com/rshdnt.htm. Other RSH products might work (please let us know). Note this product has a 30-day evaluation period. The only RSH option we used with this product was "Attempt Redirection on Every Command".

We just started the RSH daemon before testing and killed it after testing on an isolated network.
We've also run the RSH daemon using User Equivalencies on a non-isolated network. In this mode, we found we needed to use IP numbers instead of hostnames, so we had equivalencies for, e.g.,

2004-11-30 (although observed earlier). vsuite/misc/receive_a_proc_op/3 seems to not work correctly sometimes.

2003-09-26. An annoying, but not signficant, problem in running the vsuite. This problem seems to happen repeatedly on individual systems, but only for some systems. We haven't been able to find the distinguishing characteristic.

./environment/classpath/testcodezend
Can't unlink file mypkg.jr: Permission denied at C:......\jrv\jrv line 414

Historical notes:

Our original Windows implementation (Summer 2003) used only the Perl scripts; it did not use .bat files. To allow the user to type just "X" instead of "perl .....X", we included the .pl suffix in the PATHEXT environment variable (which specifies the executable extensions).
Our newer Windows implementation (Fall 2003) included both and the .bat files (which just invoke the Perl scripts) worked fine.
However, we had noticed a problem

2003-09-26: Problems with redirecting the output of jr, jrgo, and jrgox. The file to which output is redirected is empty. The programs run fine without redirection. These problems seem to happen repeatedly on individual systems, but only for some systems. We haven't been able to find the distinguishing characteristic. In running the vsuite, these tests will fail as shown due to this problem

2003-12-05: We discovered a problem on redirecting input. Got "handle invalid" from Java, but only when we had .pl before .bat in PATHEXT. We don't know the exact cause, but we reduced it to a simpler problem: a 1 line Perl that contains just system("sort");. When invoked as X < file, it gives "The handle is invalid." too. It works fine, though, when invoked as perl X < file.
2003-12-05: We also discovered that not including .pl in PATHEXT eliminates the output redirection problem noted earlier too.

So, since we no longer need the .pl files and apparently there's a bug in using them, we eliminated them.