How to build an installer with sbt - scala

I am currently having a Graalvm native image executable, and I need to build an installer that would ask users to provide an installation location, copy the native image executable to the location, and write a registry.
What would be the best approach to do this? My first idea was to look for a specific SBT plugin, but I can't find any.

Related

How can I create an Upstart Zip package using sbt-native-packager?

I am unable to generate an upstart zip package.
I have added the following to my sbt project
...
enablePlugins(UpstartPlugin).
enablePlugins(JavaServerAppPackaging)
and then run
sbt clean universal:packageBin
And a Zip file is produced but it contains the shell script in ./bin and the jars in ./lib that look like what is produced when I use JavaAppPackaging!
Where are the conf files etc needed for upstart?
Am I missing the secret sauce or using the wrong incantation?
Reading all the docs at this page I am under the impression that the archetype plugins determine what goes into my package while the format plugins determine what form the package takes.
So for example I could have a Java Server project that is designed to launch running as a daemon user using the JavaServerAppPackaging (archetype) and adding the daemonUser setting, but then have this bundled up as a Zip or Tar.gz using the Universal (format) plugin or a .deb file using the Debian (format) plugin.
Well I want a Java Service with all the files necessary to be started with the upstart System Loader but packaged as a Zip file. So I assume I need the upstart (archetype system loader) plugin with the universal (format) plugin.
There is even a tip on the system loader docs for the upstart plugin saying
You can use systemloaders with the Java Application Archetype or the Java Server Application Archetype!
Well that exactly what I want however it doesn't state how to do it!
Please can someone tell me how to get a zip bundle with an upstart layout that starts a Java Server application? And if you can point out the documentation I have clearly missed than that would help my understanding too :-)
Cheers
Karl
Thanks for ready the docs so carefully and sorry that the docs are lacking an explanation what package types support system loaders.
The short answer is: only rpm and debian packages support system loaders ( systemd, systemV and upstart ).
Why is that so? A system loader is tight to the target operation system. It's nothing universal, which is the reason it's not in there. The configuration files and or scripts and platform dependent and this is not part of your regular application directory.
Cheers,
Muki

Is it possible to use typesafe activator laucher to achieve the same thing as the zip release?

As a scaffolding tool, the official release has a size of 238MB , which is too big and I already have an repo on my local, why activator ships another repo and continue downloading the existing dependencies into it?
The launcher is actually really small, < 50K, is it possible to use it like sbt, just use the activator launcher to achieve the same functions as in the full release?
Yes. The repository is only their for convenience. The actual size of the "bootloader" of Activator is something like 2Mb. If you delete the "repository" directory from the activator zip, then everything will still work, but dependencies will be downloaded on demand.
Another hidden feature is if you download a particular template from the website (see go to http://typesafe.com/activator/template/activator-akka-spray and click the download link), you'll get a a launcher for activator which is standalone.
The activator.bat/activator/activator-launcher-<version>.jar files are the only portion of the distribution you really need to run.

Compare to the IDE for Java,do we still need Ant?

Not long before I had digged into Ant and use it doing simple practice(compile,unit test,package).Now my usual work is under Eclipse for java development,the usual work can all be simply done through Eclipse' function:in-time compiling、click button to deploy、various wizard..
So I am wondering under Eclipse do we have a need for Ant.
And if it is, at which aspect should we use Ant along with Eclipse.
Building applications is not about just building them in your IDE. You need to setup an automated build and deploy method that can be run for, say, continuous integration and deployment. The built package has to be deloyed to various environments and finally production. You cannot build them out of your own box. You cannot build it out of your IDE. You need separate build system. That is where build tools like ANT come in.
Also note that the capabilities of IDEs for doing build, deploy is limited and that is not their strength. It is, however, possible to make use of ANT and its build scripts and run them out of eclipse. This way, you have a single set of scripts for both your local ( developer ) build and the main build process. With ANT being JAVA based, you can also suit your build tool to your needs by writing custom tasks etc.
Also, when you make use of something as standard as ANT for your build system, you can move to a different IDE like Intellij IDEA and still make use of the build system that you know.
Do you need Ant if you can build through the IDE? Of course not! You can see that yourself.
Should you still have a IDE independent build with standard tools? Of course!
Note I didn't say Ant. There are a number of build tools such as Maven or Gradle that are made to build Java programs. However, there are reasons why you want an IDE independent build system:
You have a Continuous Integration Server: You do have one. Right? If you don't get one. A Continuous Integration Server automatically builds your project (and runs every test) each time a change is committed to the version control system. It catches mistakes. It also provides an OFFICIAL BUILD. No more It worked on my machine! excuses. If the Continuous Integration Server can't build it and successfully run the tests, the software isn't good.
You have others who need to work with your project on a different computer in a different environment: The problem with IDEs is that its specific to your system. Someone else checks out your project, and they may be using a different IDE. They maybe have a slightly different setup. An independent build scripting language like Ant guarantees that they can rebuild your project as intended.
If you share a project with someone else, you need an independent standard method way of being able to build that project and to know exactly what is required for that build to work. IDEs can hide that information.
I am a benchmark tester using Ant everyday. Our environment has 7 test machines and 1 console machine. For each test run, the ant script updates the working copy, restarts the database, build the product and the Grinder with proper properties and deploy them to the machines, and starts them and the monitoring softwares. With the 1000-line-buildfile, I can just type in an "ant A B C D E"-like line in the terminal on the console machine. I don't think it's a good idea to do this in a IDE like eclipse or NetBeans or anything else.
Also, in my company's product, ant is widely used. We use ant to build sample data for the benchmark test; we use ant to update Tomcat which is going to be bundled with our product; we also use ant to build and run selenium tests.
What's more, when you want to release the source code, including the IDE project files is not a good idea because there are a lot of IDEs. And what if the user just want to get a fresh build from your latest code (if you don't provide nightly build)? Providing a set of ant (or other build tool) buildfiles is a good idea. With this, you can manage your classpath for the build.
The shortest answer here wold be flexibility. The IDEs may came with pre-defined functionalities and may even allow you to choose some options using wizards. It is like generating html with Dreamweaver or such tools. It will never be as flexible as the pure thing. For example NetBeans uses Ant underneath.
Quoted from: Netbeans: Build Tools
The default NetBeans IDE project system is built directly on top of
the Ant build system. All of the project commands, such as "Build
Project" and "Run File in Debugger", call targets in the project's Ant
script. You can therefore build and run your project outside the IDE
exactly as it is built and run inside the IDE.
Even after you use tools for that purpose you are most likely still to brush up. So, what I am saying is, what the IDEs do for you is only a subset of what you can do with the pure ant or maven( if you use it). For simple tasks such as compile and run, IDEs do pretty much a good job! But if you have a use case as complex as deploying on CI IDEs won't help you. You need the whole flexibility of your build tools.

How to share a common customBuildCallbacks script between multiple Eclipse plug-ins

I am trying to avoid duplicating customBuildCallbacks.xml for all my plug-ins, when called from either PDE's headless build or the Eclipse GUI. I have in customBuildCallbacks.xml steps to generate code or modify the plug-in packaging that I:
obviously want to run with the headless build
would also like to run either when I export this plug-in from the GUI or from an external builder watching specific files in my plug-in
The headless build runs in a well defined environment, so I can set customBuildCallbacks.buildpath or even use a relative path in each plug-in's build.properties to point at my common customBuildCallbacks.xml. However, this is trickier from the GUI: that path is different for every developers since we do not have sources in the Eclipse workspace (we import projects from various locations due to our internal build process). I was hoping for every project to have an associated ant property holding its path on disk, similar to the ${workspace} variables exposed in various dialogs. I couldn't find anything useful though.
Does anyone have any experience doing this kind of things?
Thanks,
Romain

How to run Eclipse launch configurations programmatically?

I'm finding it difficult to phrase this question well, as there are quite a few generic terms (run, configuration, launch, etc.). Here goes:
You can save run configurations in a .launch file. (in the Run Configuration Dialog, under the Common tab, Save as a shared file.
We check these in to SVN. The developers can pass them around, and it helps getting new devs running a working application quicker.
I'd like to check these out as part of our build and use them to programatically run the application, the tests, etc, without spinning up the whole IDE.
What would be the best way to run a .launch file outside of the UI?
Edit: I am trying to unify the tests run on the build server and the IDE. I do not
particularly want to give up integrated debugging, which would be the case with an ant script to run the tests .
This is probably more a problem for integration testing with multiple bundles, or unit testing a whole bundle, where you'd like to mock up extensions.
there is an eclipse plugin built over JUnit, called TPTP. It provides an automation client which can be used to launch the test from eclipse with no gui. maybe it helps
Ant4Eclipse may provide a good starting point on how to do this.
Unfortunately, this is limited to Java Applications and JUnit configurations; I am more interested in PDE applications and Plugin JUnit tests.
I have recently had alot of success building an Eclipse RCP app inside a Hudson CI server using Eclipse Buckminster. It took a bit of doing, but once I setup both features, made my RCP product be based on features, and added the Buckminster query files and the like, it worked. There is a Hudson/Jenkins Buckminster plugin that allowed me to have hudson build the application.
After saving the launch configurations for each test fragment, I created hudson commands to invoke them (yes one line per test fragment unfortunately), but after that I got the automated CI build that I wanted.
You could also use the shell command Eclipse uses. To get it:
Run your program in Eclipse
Go to the "Debug" view
Right-click on the process (probably the second item in the tree) and select "Properties"
Copy shell command and delete the agentlib flag to run in bash
I think you don't need to use the .launch configurations to run the tests. If you build an application using the Eclipse Build System, then you can use the AntRunner application from Eclipse to run your units tests. This doesn't start the whole IDE.
This article describes how to run the tests during your build process. With this process, you use a special "Test" Eclipse and load the plugins you want to test.
Perhaps running the configurations the way you would run your own custom run configurations would help here. It is described in this article.