## 2.1 Downloading and Installing

The first step to getting up and running with Grails is to install the distribution. To do so follow these steps:

- Download a binary distribution of Grails and extract the resulting zip file to a location of your choice
- Set the GRAILS_HOME environment variable to the location where you extracted the zip

- On Unix/Linux based systems this is typically a matter of adding something like the following `export GRAILS_HOME=/path/to/grails` to your profile
- On Windows this is typically a matter of setting an environment variable under `My Computer/Advanced/Environment Variables`

- Now you need to add the `bin` directory to your `PATH` variable:

- On Unix/Linux base system this can be done by doing a `export PATH="$PATH:$GRAILS_HOME/bin"`
- On windows this is done by modifying the `Path` environment variable under `My Computer/Advanced/Environment Variables`

If Grails is working correctly you should now be able to type `grails` in the terminal window and see output similar to the below:

    Welcome to Grails 1.0 - http://grails.org/
    Licensed under Apache Standard License 2.0
    Grails home is set to: /Developer/grails-1.0
    No script name specified. Use 'grails help' for more info