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

- Download a binary distribution of Griffon and extract the resulting zip file to a location of your choice
- Set the GRIFFON_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 GRIFFON_HOME=/path/to/griffon` 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="$PATH:$GRIFFON_HOME/bin"`
- On windows this is done by modifying the `Path` environment variable under `My Computer/Advanced/Environment Variables`

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

    Welcome to Griffon 0.9.5-rc2 - http://griffon.codehaus.org/
    Licensed under Apache Standard License 2.0
    Griffon home is set to: /usr/local/griffon-0.9.5-rc2
    No script name specified. Use 'griffon help' for more info