Processing Language System Requirements

Created on: 26 November 2012
Updated on: 30 September 2014

What are the system hardware and software requirements for running the Processing language development environment and output executable files? This article provides the information.

Processing Hardware Requirements

The Processing development environment should run on most modern computers. It will run on any computer that can run the Java Runtime Environment (JRE). The Processing website does not specify any particular minimum system requirements for hardware.

Processing Software Requirements

Operating Systems

Processing runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. The actual supported platforms can be found on the Processing wiki article titled: Supported Platforms.

Note that the supported platforms page lists the operating systems versions and releases that Processing has been tested on. This does not mean that it will not run on other versions or releases of these operating systems. E.g. Processing should work on other Linux distributions besides Ubuntu. The supported platforms page does also list some of the versions of Windows that Processing will not run on.

Other Software Requirements

Running Applications from the Processing IDE

Java is required for the Processing development environment to run. The software that is developed in the Processing IDE also requires Java to run.

Java is included with the Processing development software, so does not need to be installed on the computer separately. More information on the Java versions supported by Processing can be found on the Supported Platforms page.

Running Exported Processing Applications

The Processing development environment is capable of exporting an application that has been written in the processing environment. This produces an executable file and supporting files that can be copied to and run from a computer that does not have the Processing development environment installed on it.

To be able to run an exported executable file on a computer, that computer needs to have the Java Runtime Environment software installed on it.

The supported version of the JRE can be found under Java Versions on the Supported Platforms page.