Installing play framework

Question

I am on windows 7 and I am trying to install play framework.

I created the environment variable in system variables with
variable name: play, value: c:\webapp\play\

When I am trying to run play help from commander it says

play is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or 
batch file and it is running only in the directory of c:webapp\play.

Am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

To be able to run Play anywhere on the command line, create a PLAY_HOME environment variable pointing to the play folder, for e.g. c:\play-2.0.1, and add %PLAY_HOME% to the PATH environment variable.

Answer 2

Muhammad is correct. The only thing I would add is this: After saving the environment variables, I noticed that one must:

1. close ALL explorer windows
2. open a new one
3. open a new cmd prompt

and then I saw the play_home in the path and play worked everywhere. For some reason, updating the environment variables didn't refresh existing windows.

UPDATE:
If you're in a hurry and feeling rebellious, open a cmd prompt window first, then kill explorer.exe, then restart explorer.exe in the cmd window.
That should refresh everything but be careful...

Answer 3

Here is how I have set it up for others in the past.

Create a directory c:\playframework

Create two more inside of this

framework and apps

I then have a bat file called env.bat containing the following

set PATH=%path%;c:\playframework\framework\'

You can then run env.bat to make sure play is initialise.

Answer 4

I realized that it doesn't work if you have a space in your path to the play framework.

So instead of

C:\Folder with space\PlayFramework

try

C:\FolderWithoutSpace\PlayFramework

This fixed it for me, guess it has to do with the play batch file which doesn't handle paths with spaces correctly. Stumbled upon this question, when searching for a solution, so it might help some other folks.