How To Install Grails on Ubuntu

Grails is a web framework built on Groovy which runs on Java Virtual Machine. Grails was first named as Groovy on Rails but after creator of Ruby on Rails requested "on Rails" suffix to be dropped and the name has changed into Grails which I think is really nice. In this simple tutorial, I explain how to install Grails on Ubuntu.

Assuming that you have Java SDK 1.4 or higher, there are only two steps you should follow in order to install Grails on Ubuntu.

Install Groovy first.

sudo apt-get install groovy

Open up a terminal window and type the following commands:

wge t http://ant-deb-task.googlecode.com/files/grails_1.1.1-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i grails_1.1.1-1_all.deb

After that you can use the "grails" command from your terminal. There is a note I should make, when you use "grails" command and get "JAVA_HOME is not defined correctl" error, type the following commands in your terminal:

locate java
# example output: /usr/bin/java
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/bin/java

And you are good to go. Please remember that you need Java SDK 1.4 or higher in order to be able to use Grails.