You might encounter the following error message when working with 1-4-unstable branch of Rhodes:

Your java bin folder does not appear to be on your path.
This is required to use rhodes.

Here is the fix… Change line 51 in Rakefile (from Rhodes sources; in my case the file is located to /Users/radu/sources/rhodes/Rakefile)

# change this line
out = `javac -version 2>&1`
# to
out = `javac -help 2>&1`

Explanation: that line checks if the command javac can be executed from current directory (thus the java bin folder is in the path). The problem is that the exit code, when running javac with -version parameter, is 512 not 0 (zero) as it is expected on the next line:

puts "nnYour java bin folder does not appear to be on your path.nThis is required to use rhodes.nn" unless $? == 0

Of course, you should also make sure that java bin folder is indeed in your path. You can run “which java” to find out what is the folder.