Before attempting to build Electric from the java.net, you must have these tools installed on your computer:
  1. JDK 1.6 or later (a JRE is sufficient for running Electric, but a JDK is necessary to build it).
  2. Subversion. This is the source-code control system.
  3. Apache Ant 1.8.0 or later.

The following variable should be defined:
   JAVA_PATH path to JDK root directory

Next, download the latest sources using Subversion. The first time you do this, issue these commands:
   cd WORK-DIR
   svn --username USERNAME checkout https://svn.java.net/svn/electric~svn/trunk/electric
   cd electric
Once the code has been downloaded, it can be updated with these commands:
   cd WORK-DIR/electric
   svn update

Next, compile the sources (it takes longer the first time, but works incrementally after that):
   cd WORK-DIR/electric/packaging
   ant

Next run Electric (note that the "X.XX" should be replaced with the current version, for example "9.01"):
   WORK-DIR/electric/packaging/electricPublic-X.XX.jar
or:
   java -jar WORK-DIR/electric/packaging/electricPublic-X.XX.jar
or:
   java -classpath WORK-DIR/electric/packaging/electricPublic-X.XX.jar com.sun.electric.Launcher

If your design is large and you need more memory, you can request a larger heap size with this command:
   java -classpath WORK-DIR/electric/packaging/electricPublic-X.XX.jar com.sun.electric.Launcher -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m