# Installation of Java and PCGen

The following sections describe how to install Java and PCGen Manually for PC, Macintosh, and the *nix varieties.

The first section describes the steps for manually installing Java on your specific OS and how to determine what version you may have and which version to install.

The later sections describes how to install PCGen directly from the zip files, and how to upgrade from a previous version.

As of version 5.5 PCGen is distributed in 3 different versions:

1. pcgenXXX_full.zip : everything including GMGen and PDF, best installed in new directory.
2. pcgenXXX_patch.zip : everything that's changed since the latest point realease (e.g. 5.6.0), install over any version within the same major version (5.6.1 to 5.6.x).
3. pcgenXXX_partial.zip : everything except GMGen and PDF, best installed in new directory.

Where XXX is the version number of PCGen (e.g. 560 for version 5.6.0.)

For users who have trouble getting the zip files to unzip properly, we have some OS-specific installs that should help minimize the chance of install related errors. Links to these installs can be found at the alternate release site.

These are the same PCGen version everyone else is using, just packaged with installers which target Windows and Mac OS X users specifically. Typically there is a gap between when the official release is done and when these special installers are ready.