How to install Kafka on Windows?

Ok, it's finally not complicated :)

The only steps are:

1. Download Kafka and uncompress it somewhere nice (let's say C:/Kafka)
2. Install (recommended) WSL2 or Cygwin

If using Cygwin, edit \bin\kafka-run-class.sh and at the end of the file, change

`exec $JAVA $KAFKA_HEAP_OPTS $KAFKA_JVM_PERFORMANCE_OPTS $KAFKA_GC_LOG_OPTS $KAFKA_JMX_OPTS $KAFKA_LOG4J_OPTS -cp $CLASSPATH $KAFKA_OPTS "$@"`

to

``exec java $KAFKA_HEAP_OPTS $KAFKA_JVM_PERFORMANCE_OPTS $KAFKA_GC_LOG_OPTS $KAFKA_JMX_OPTS $KAFKA_LOG4J_OPTS -cp `cygpath -wp $CLASSPATH` $KAFKA_OPTS "$@"``

4. In Environment Variables, Add java to your Path System Variable:

That's it.. you can now run ZooKeeper and Kafka servers and start playing with topics and stuff..

These are the steps I followed to run kafka on Windows

1. Install Zookeeper first (I downloaded v3.3.6) zookeeper-3.3.6.tar.gz
2. Extract Zookeeper and run this command in powershell/cmd \zookeeper-3.3.6\bin> .\zkServer.cmd Now this should up a Zookeeper instance on localhost:2181
3. Download Kafka binary version (I downloaded v0.10.0.1)kafka_2.10-0.10.0.1.tgz
4. Extract Kafka, time to modify some configs
5. Inside Kafka extraction you can find .\config\server.properties
6. In .\config\server.properties replace log.dirs=c:/kafka/kafka-logs
7. Note: Make sure to create those folders in relevant paths
8. Happy news: Now Kafka ships with windows .bat scripts, You can find these files inside ./bin/windows folder
9. Start powershell/cmd and run this command to start Kafka broker .\bin\windows\kafka-server-start.bat .\config\server.properties
10. DONE!, Now you have a running Zookeeper instance and a Kafka broker.

A more current answer for the benefit of anyone else still wondering about this, I downloaded the binary and everything worked right out of the box. The source version, however, didn't work.