(1) Visit the IBM i Rational Developer website
It’s only a short stroll down to IBM's own version of Diagon alley to the IBM DOWNLOAD WEBSITE over at IBM Rational Developer for i
Rational Developer for i Download
IBM® Rational® Developer for i provides an integrated development environment (IDE) to create, maintain and modernize applications on the IBM i platform. It integrates developer tools such as search, edit, build and analysis, refactoring capabilities and debuggers with the widely used Eclipse framework for faster, easier application development and modernization. It resides on the developer’s desktop, supporting development in both host-connected and disconnected modes.
This product has all features enabled. Download the product for an evaluation period of 120 days. The simplest method to install the product at the latest fixpack level is to use the web install method. Alternatively, you can download the product zip images.
(2) Downloading IBM i Rational Developer
Select Download method:
- Automated web install using IBM Installation Manager (Windows)
- Web install using IBM Installation Manager (Mac, Linux)
- Download product zip images (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Download TRIAL Version
At time of write, the current version (RDi V9.6) is split into two file - each sitting at around 3.5GB. Download both to your DOWNLOADS folder. Select both files and click EXTRACT ALL
Extract all into one folder:
These are large downloads containing over 30k files!
Come on IBM - thirty thousand files to install this product! WTAF? This unzip takes ages, so leave it unzipping and go and make yourself a nice cup of tea
DOWNLOAD & UNZIP COMPLETED
Now you can have a look at the downloaded files and the install.txt file is fairly terse but has the install instructions:
If you download the installation files, extract the compressed files to a common root directory (for example, on Windows, this could be C:\temp\INSTALL_IMAGE).
After the files are extracted, they look like this: C:\temp\INSTALL_IMAGE\disk1 C:\temp\INSTALL_IMAGE\disk2
The launchpad program provides you with a single location to view release information and start the installation process.
To start the launchpad program: For Windows: Run launchpad.exe from disk1 For Linux: Run ./launchpad.sh from disk1 For OS X: From Finder, run Launchpad.app from disk1 Note: To use the launchpad to install, you must have Administrator or root privileges.
(3) Install RDi (Windows)
Once unzipped I ran the ADMININSTALL.BAT as administrator
After thinking and pondering the meaning of life it pops this up:
So, just follow the prompts and it install and downloads even more stuff:
Now go and grab another coffee because this bit takes a few minutes. Long enough for a fresh brew. Or even a cup of tea. But never Chai Tea because that is clearly the juice of the Devil.
Finally you will see this:
INSTALLED – *boom*
Next step is to open Rational Developer for IBM-i and see what it does!