Environment Setup

Getting started

In this first challenge you'll get your own copy of the XbotEdu code, download it to your computer, and open it in IntelliJ so you're ready to start writing robot code.

Onboarding

If you just want to do the curriculum, follow the instructions in Edu Onboarding.

Or if you need to set up for in-season robot programming, follow the instructions in Full Programming Onboarding instead. It covers everything in Edu Onboarding plus a few extra tools.

Important: Don't continue until onboarding is complete. Missing tools cause confusing errors in the steps below.

Fork the XbotEdu repository

A 'fork' is a personal copy of a code repository on GitHub. Forking a repository allows you to freely experiment with changes without affecting the original project. More background on forking.

1. In the browser, make sure you're signed in to GitHub, then navigate to Team488/XbotEdu
2. Click the Fork button in the upper right corner. (If a banner is covering it, close the banner first.)
3. On the "Create a new fork" page, make sure Owner is set to your own GitHub account, then click Create fork.

When it finishes, you'll be looking at github.com/<your-username>/XbotEdu, which is your fork.

Sync the repository locally

"Cloning" downloads a copy of a repository from GitHub onto your computer so you can work on it.

1. Follow Use GitHub Desktop to clone to clone your fork (<your-username>/XbotEdu, not Team488/XbotEdu).
2. If GitHub Desktop asks "How are you planning to use this fork?", choose For my own purposes. Later in the curriculum you'll open pull requests against your own fork.

Warning: don't clone inside of a OneDrive folder. OneDrive tries to sync the thousands of files the build creates, which causes slow builds and strange file-locking errors. On many Windows computers the Documents folder is inside OneDrive, so check the Local path in the clone dialog. If it contains OneDrive, change it to something like C:\Users\<you>\GitHub.

Open the Edu projects in IntelliJ

1. Open the application IntelliJ IDEA (it may be listed as "IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition"), which you installed during the onboarding steps.
2. Click Open from the Projects tab.
3. Navigate to the XbotEdu folder you just cloned and open it.
4. If prompted, open the project as a Gradle project, not an Eclipse project.
5. If prompted, Trust the project.
6. The project will automatically start building. You can watch its progress in the status bar at the bottom of the window.

IntelliJ requires some additional configuration after you load a project for the first time. You need to tell it to use the Java version (JDK) that came with WPILib.

Open the main menu and choose Project Structure...

On the Project tab, set SDK to "temurin-17". If it's not present, you may need to select "Add JDK from disk..." and find the JDK that you installed with WPILib, which is located at C:\Users\Public\wpilib\<year>\jdk (for example, C:\Users\Public\wpilib\2026\jdk).

Go to the SDKs tab and select the same JDK (in this case, "temurin-17") and verify that the paths all start with C:\Users\Public\wpilib\<year>\jdk.

Click OK.

Open the main menu again and choose Settings...

Navigate to "Build, Execution, Deployment" -> "Build Tools" -> "Gradle" in the menu on the left. In the "Gradle JVM" field, select "Project SDK", and then click OK.

Tip: If IntelliJ shows build or Gradle errors after these steps, try reloading the project from the Gradle tool window (the elephant icon on the right side) using the Reload All Gradle Projects button. If errors persist, ask a mentor or teammate for help. That's what we're here for!

Next Steps

Continue with the next lesson: Java Basics