It is not necessary to build Electric from the source code because the downloads are ready to run. For people who wish to explore the source code, this section describes how you can do it.

Source code is available in two forms:

- Packaged in the JAR file. The Electric download from the Free Software Foundation (GNU) has source code in it which you can extract to build Electric. See Section 1-4-2 for more. Note that this method is not the preferred way to access the Electric source code because it does not handle dependencies.
- At java.net. The Electric source code is in a repository at java.net, specifically at java.net/projects/electric. Before accessing the source code, you must create a java.net account. There are a number of ways to build Electric from the source code at java.net:
  - Using the command-line (see Section 1-4-3).
  - Using the Netbeans development environment (see Section 1-4-4).
  - Using the Eclipse development environment (see Section 1-4-5).