Here are two short, but hopefully good questions:
When to use plugins and when fragments?
What is a headless PDE build and when to use it (and when not)?
Fragments are for when you want to expand or alter the functionality of a plugin. A fragment cannot exist on it's own, it requires a parent plugin. The typical example of a fragment are for localizing a plugin, i.e to change strings to other languages. The fragment will then alter the functionality of the plugin to replace resources or code with the contents of the fragment.
More details here Tutorial here
The headless part means you do the build without a gui, i.e from commandline or from a tool such as jenkins/hudson. PDE stands for Plugin Development Environment. In short, it adds some tasks to Ant, and you can use the defined resources and dependencies in the plugin.xml to build. The alternative is to again define classpaths, sources, etc in an Ant build file.
I've used it in some projects and it has been difficult to setup properly, but its the best way to build Eclipse plugins or products. We wanted to use relative paths for the build and had major problems with that. The earlier in your project that you set up a continous headless PDE build, the easier it will be to configure.
More info here
Related
I am stuck with a problem I can't solve for weaks now.
I have to create a modular JavaFX application, where each component defines a "domain unit" (with models+views+controllers). Each component can be loaded into a "shell application" (as a content of a tab view or multiple tab views) and the modules can depend on another module(s) (their content in tabs won't appear if their dependency is not loaded).
That's why I was planning to create an OSGi based JavaFX application and build it with Gradle as a multiproject.
I've already tried dozens of tutorials with no success and I experienced, that most of these tutorials:
are outdated, not reproducible (e.g. elcipse's interface, templates have changed, bndtools tutorials doesn't seem to work, equinox doesn't seem to to work without felix, javafx8+osgi generate different kind of problems... etc.)
are too complex for a beginner (I just started to learn OSGi and Gradle) and they skip important steps I am not aware of
contain too much "IDE magic" (I would rather type some code instead of filling forms in eclipse)
some solve the problem with different tools (maven/tycho, bndtools, e(fx)clipse), but I've got no time to learn them
I want my application to be independent from IDE's environment. I don't want to use e(fx)clipse or BndTools if possible (even if they can make the build process easier)..
I'm experimenting with OSGi implementations, that's why I would rather not to choose between Equinox, Felix or Karaf.
I've already programmed similar application in .NET world, but it seems to me impossible to do the same in Java world..
My main questions are:
is it possible to do what I have imagined?
how to create a gradle multiproject what is IDE/platform independent (if projects are not tied to eclipse environment, or equinox, but it's possible to use them)?
what are the best ways to initialize the application (shell application + modules) and load the independent modules/bundles/components?
how to separate my views into subprojects (what build.gradle files should contain)?
how to solve the javafx8 inpompatibility with osgi?
what is the correct way to apply javafx plugin in gradle?
what tutorials are the most relevant?
is there any working example, pattern or tutorial (without using additional tools) what solve the same problem (using only osgi+javafx+gradle)?
I could group your questions in differents topic:
OSGI
You just need to google around to find out that is a java specification that encourages modularization, provides hot-deploy feature, and so on. As I told you, is just an specification like Java Servlet API, so they are different providers or implementers of OSGI Specification such as Felix and Equinox. Karaf instead is a OSGI container based on Felix, so you get all felix benefits and in addiction karaf natives features. For that reason I encourage you to take Karaf into use.
Aquote BndTool
In order to satisfy the OSGI specification, you need that your modules contains a MANIFEST.MF which holds all dependency information so Karaf create the classloader required for your bundles.
Assuming that you don't want to create that MANIFEST.MF files by hand, you could take aqute/bndtool for that. Don't get mess with bndtool for eclipse plugin. That application can be used from command line, from a maven plugin, or from a gradle plugin. Basically scans your classes, check the imports, and create a MANIFEST.MF automatically.
Gradle
If you choose gradle as a build tool, then you can take into use: Bnd Gradle plugin. It's easy to set up, but follow the instruction for non-workspace plugin. If you don't want to use BndTool for eclipse. IDE independent solution, you mentioned in your question.
MultiProject Layout
How the project layout should look like, depends on your modularization, but you can have a look on this layout example that uses gradle+osgi+karaf for a multiproject. Perhaps inspires you.
https://github.com/antoniomaria/gradle-karaf-bnd-project
I am new to J2EE. I would like to create a Spring+Primefaces+Hibernate project.
I googled for it.
But I found all projects examples show in internet contains maven. My questions are
Is it possible to create a spring+primefaces+hibernate project in eclipse without Maven? If no, what is need of maven?
How to add the jar file of primefaces and spring and hibernate in eclipse?
Will the spring controller xml file (spring context or dispatcher servlet) be created automatically or manually?I mean Spring MVC.
Will the hibernate file (mapping file) also be created automatically or manually?
If possible, can anyone guide me to tutorial (preferably video) to implement the same?
I am using tomcat 7 and Eclipse - kepler.
Any help is appreciated.
If this is downvoted , do specify the reason also.
Although it's not a 'must' to use Maven or any other build tool, you should strongly consider using one.Eclipse Kepler has by default maven support but feel free to use other build tools(Gradle, Ant) or none(see 2.).Maven and the other build tools remove the headache of scaffolding, searching for dependencies(external jars like spring-mvc, hibernate, some db drivers), even deploying applications in a server.
If you chose not to use a build tool you have to manually get your project dependencies and enter them
into your project's buildpath(Right Click -> Build Path then enter their location).As you have noticed this step can be really really time consuming...
No, you have to manually create the configuration unless you use another project that already has what you need, again this might get easier with a build tool(maven archetypes for example)
The same as 3.
You won't have a hard time finding resources about these technologies, they are being used practically everywhere, and I think the Spring team has some videos in their YouTube channel.
Hope that helps a little!
1:* The fundamental difference between Maven and Ant is that Maven's design regards all projects as having a certain structure and a set of supported task work-flows (e.g., getting resources from source control, compiling the project, unit testing, etc.). While most software projects in effect support these operations and actually do have a well-defined structure, Maven requires that this structure and the operation implementation details be defined in the POM file. Thus, Maven relies on a convention on how to define projects and on the list of work-flows that are generally supported in all projects.
This design constraint resembles the way that an IDE handles a project, and it provides many benefits, such as a succinct project definition, and the possibility of automatic integration of a Maven project with other development tools such as IDEs, build servers, etc.
But one drawback to this approach is that Maven requires a user to first understand what a project is from the Maven point of view, and how Maven works with projects, because what happens when one executes a phase in Maven is not immediately obvious just from examining the Maven project file. In many cases, this required structure is also a significant hurdle in migrating a mature project to Maven, because it is usually hard to adapt from other approaches.
In Ant, projects do not really exist from the tool's technical perspective. Ant works with XML build scripts defined in one or more files. It processes targets from these files and each target executes tasks. Each task performs a technical operation such as running a compiler or copying files around. Targets are executed primarily in the order given by their defined dependency on other targets. Thus, Ant is a tool that chains together targets and executes them based on inter-dependencies and other Boolean conditions.
The benefits provided by Ant are also numerous. It has an XML language optimized for clearer definition of what each task does and on what it depends. Also, all the information about what will be executed by an Ant target can be found in the Ant script.
A developer not familiar with Ant would normally be able to determine what a simple Ant script does just by examining the script. This is not usually true for Maven.
However, even an experienced developer who is new to a project using Ant cannot infer what the higher level structure of an Ant script is and what it does without examining the script in detail. Depending on the script's complexity, this can quickly become a daunting challenge. With Maven, a developer who previously worked with other Maven projects can quickly examine the structure of a never-before-seen Maven project and execute the standard Maven work-flows against it while already knowing what to expect as an outcome.
It is possible to use Ant scripts that are defined and behave in a uniform manner for all projects in a working group or an organization. However, when the number and complexity of projects rises, it is also very easy to stray from the initially desired uniformity. With Maven this is less of a problem because the tool always imposes a certain way of doing thi
2:* You have to download all required jars file for hibernate/spring/primefaces from internet and place them in your project build path or in lib folder.
3:* Spring configuration files need to be created by you so that you can get the concept.
4:* Hibernate mapping files can be created by using reverse Engineering techniques for hibernate from where you can generates hbm files or you can use annotations if you dont want xml.
I suggest you to first create a sample java project in eclipse then download all required jars and place them in lib folder. Then configure hibernate in projects and spring integration.
I have an eclipse feature with a few platform dependent fragments (jogamp based plugins, to be precise)
I'd like to export that feature using PDE export. It works, as usual, only it will omit all plugins that do not match my current platform.
I want to use this exported feature as a p2 site that can be used from different platforms, so that's no good.
Is there a way to export an eclipse feature for all platforms?
Thanks, Frank
There's no easy way to get all the platforms from within eclipse as a PDE export. I took a crack at using PDE build as a workspace export, http://pweclipse.blogspot.com/2011/02/pde-build-as-workspace-export.html but it requires some digging to get all the properties correct and it's specific to one workspace.
It's better to set up a proper headless PDE build to generate your p2 site.
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
I have a bunch of Eclipse plugins and features, which I would like to build as part of a nightly (headless) build. I've managed to do this using a complicated setup involving manually specifying paths to Eclipse plugin jars, copying customTargets.xml, etc.
Is there really no simpler solution? Isn't there a way to just point out my Update Site's site.xml and say "build"; i.e. the equivalent of clicking "Build All" in the Update Site project?
Given that all the answers to this question are all 3-5 years old, I figure an update would be useful to others.
For those who want to add the building of Eclipse plugins to the CI process, I recommend they check out the Eclipse Tycho project. This is essentially a Maven plugin that allows you you to wrap eclipse projects within Maven project. With this we use Atlassian Bamboo to build our Eclipse plugin. This also allows us to use the Maven jarsigner plugin to sign our plugin files.
I've just been fighting with this problem myself. Are you using the productBuild script? Maybe putting your features into a product would help you out.
I am doing a headless build on a product configuration. The only script that I customized was to add some ant tasks to customTargets.xml to get my sources from SVN and to do a little cleanup on JNLP manifests after the build as I am using WebStart.
Then you only need to invoke antRunner on the out of the box productBuild.xml in the scripts/productBuild directory (in the pde-build plugin).
Check out Ant4Eclipse. I've used it to parse Eclipse's .classpath/.project files to determine project dependencies and classpaths. In combination with Groovy Ant Task, I have automatically built multiple projects in Ant using the Eclipse project files for build information.
A buildPlugin task exists, but I have not personally used it.
We are currently using PDE to automatically build features and our complete product. It works quite well. Make sure you use the right script for product build or feature build.
Eclipse Help on using PDE
EDIT: We've now migrated to Buckminster, which has an excellent command line interface.
You might look into buckminster and maven. There is a learning curve for sure, but they seem to do their jobs well.
We are using headlesseclipse, which can be found on Google Code:
http://code.google.com/p/headlesseclipse/
It works quite well, and can easily automate command-line building of plugins and features. However, I have not yet found a way to automate building of the update site via the command line.