The easiest way to install FindBugs is to download a binary distribution. Binary distributions are available in gzipped tar format and zip format. Once you have downloaded a binary distribution, extract it into a directory of your choice.

Extracting a gzipped tar format distribution:

$ gunzip -c findbugs-2.0.3.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Extracting a zip format distribution:

C:\Software>unzip findbugs-2.0.3.zip

Usually, extracting a binary distribution will create a directory ending in findbugs-2.0.3. For example, if you extracted the binary distribution from the C:\Software directory, then the FindBugs software will be extracted into the directory C:\Software\findbugs-2.0.3. This directory is the FindBugs home directory. We'll refer to it as $FINDBUGS_HOME (or %FINDBUGS_HOME% for Windows) throughout this manual.