Before attempting to build Electric from the savannah.gnu.org, you must have these tools installed on your computer:
The following variable should be defined:
   JAVA_PATH path to JDK root directory
Next, download the latest sources using Subversion.
The first time you do this, issue these commands:
   cd WORK-DIR
   svn checkout svn://svn.savannah.gnu.org/electric
   cd electric
Once the code has been downloaded, it can be updated with these commands:
   cd WORK-DIR/electric
   svn update
Next, compile the sources (it takes longer the first time, but works incrementally after that):
   cd WORK-DIR/electric/packaging
   ant
Next run Electric (note that the "X.XX" should be replaced with the current version, for example "9.01"):
   WORK-DIR/electric/packaging/electricPublic-X.XX.jar
or:
   java -jar WORK-DIR/electric/packaging/electricPublic-X.XX.jar
or:
   java -classpath WORK-DIR/electric/packaging/electricPublic-X.XX.jar com.sun.electric.Launcher
If your design is large and you need more memory, you can request a larger heap size with this command:
   java -classpath WORK-DIR/electric/packaging/electricPublic-X.XX.jar com.sun.electric.Launcher -Xmx1024m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m