## Quick Installation
In the beginning, just one quick paragraph of how to get access to BioJava.
BioJava is open source and you can get the code from [Github](https://github.com/biojava/biojava), however it might be easier this way:
BioJava uses [Maven](http://maven.apache.org/) as a build and distribution system. If you are new to Maven, take a look at the [Getting Started with Maven](http://maven.apache.org/guides/getting-started/index.html) guide.
As of version 4, BioJava is available in maven central. This is all you would need to add a BioJava dependency to your projects:
```xml
...
org.biojava
biojava-structure
4.2.0
org.biojava
biojava-structure-gui
4.2.0
```
If you run
mvn package
on your project, the BioJava dependencies will be automatically downloaded and installed for you.
### (Optional) Configuration
BioJava can be configured through several properties:
| Property | Description |
| --- | --- |
| `PDB_DIR` | Directory for caching structure files from the PDB. Mirrors the PDB's FTP server directory structure, with `PDB_DIR` equivalent to ftp://ftp.wwpdb.org/pub/pdb/. Default: temp directory |
| `PDB_CACHE_DIR` | Cache directory for other files related to the structure package. Default: temp directory |
These can be set either as java properties or as environmental variables. For example:
```
# This could be added to .bashrc
export PDB_DIR=...
# Or override for a particular execution
java -DPDB_DIR=... -cp ...
```
Note that your IDE may ignore `.bashrc` settings, but should have a preference for passing VM arguments.
---
Navigation:
[Home](../README.md)
| [Book 3: The Structure Modules](README.md)
| Chapter 1 : Installation
Next: [Chapter 2 : First Steps](firststeps.md)