docs/VAJAntTool.html - ant - Git at Google

 <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
 <html>
 <head>
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
   <meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
   <title>Ant VisualAge for Java Tool Integration</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <h1>Ant PlugIn for VisualAge for Java</h1>
 <a name="authors"></a>by
 <ul>
   <li>Wolf Siberski (<a href="mailto:wolf.siberski@tui.de">
     wolf.siberski@tui.de</a>)</li>
   <li>Christoph Wilhelms (<a href="mailto:christoph.wilhelms@tui.de">
     christoph.wilhelms@tui.de</a>)</li>
 </ul>
 Version 1.0 - 2000/11/09<br>
 <hr>
 <h2>Table of Contents</h2>
 <ul>
   <li><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
   <li><a href="#installation">Installation</a></li>
   <li><a href="#usage">Usage</a></li>
   <li><a href="#faq">Frequently Asked Questions</a></li>
   <li><a href="#va_versions">Visual Age Versions</a></li>
 </ul>
 <hr>
 <h2><a name="introduction"></a>Introduction</h2>
 Visual Age for Java is a great Java IDE, but it lacks decent build support
 for creating deliveries. On the other hand, Ant supports the build process
 very good, but is (at least at the moment) command line based. So we decided
 to write a small visual Ant frontend to make running Ant from VAJ possible.
 We use the Tool API to integrate Ant in VisualAge for Java. In combination
 with the VAJ targets (vajload, vajexport, vajimport) you can load defined
 defined versions of projects into your workspace, export the source code,
 compile it with an external compiler and build a jar without leaving the
 IDE. Of course compile messages are viewed in a logging window. Concluding:
 This tool provides a comfortable deployment VAJ has not (out of the box)!<br>
 <hr>
 <h2><a name="installation"></a>Installation</h2>
 At the moment the installation has it's rough edges. If something described
 below doesn't work for You, it's probably not Your fault but incomplete/wrong
 instructions. In this case, please contact one of the <a href="#authors">
 authors</a>.<br>
 We assume <font face="Courier">C:\IBMVJava</font> as VAJ install directory.
 If You have installed it elsewhere, adapt the pathes below. Execute following
 steps to get the PlugIn up and running:
 <ul>
   <li>import the Ant sources into VAJ.</li>
   <li>import an appropriate XML parser to VAJ (we use Xerces 1.2.0 and are
     happy with it). Unfortunately the XML parser delivered with VAJ (in the
     project 'IBM XML Parser for Java') doesn't work with Ant. You have to
     remove that project (temporarily) from the workspace before importing
     another XML implementation.</li>
   <li>Create the directory <font face="Courier">
     C:\IBMVJava\ide\tools\org-apache-tools-ant</font>.</li>
   <li>export the Ant and XML parser class files into this directory. Be sure
     to select class files and resources. Sources don't have to be exported.
     Some optional tasks have errors and can't be exported when You don't have
     the necessary packages in Your workspace (e.g. junit task, ejbc task).
     If You need this tasks either import these packages into VAJ, too,
     or copy the .class files directly from the binary distribution</li>
   <li>copy <font face="Courier">default.ini</font> (in
     <font face="Courier">jakarta-ant\src\...\taskdefs\optional\ide</font>)
     to <font face="Courier">
     C:\IBMVJava\ide\tools\org-apache-tools-ant\default.ini</font>.</li>
   <li>if&nbsp; you want to access this help from the Workbench, create the
     directory <font face="Courier">
     C:\IBMVJava\ide\tools\org-apache-tools-ant\doc</font> and copy the files
     <font face="Courier">VAJAntTool.html</font>,
     <font face="Courier">toolmenu.gif</font> and
     <font face="Courier">anttool1.gif</font> to it.</li>
   <li>VAJ has to be restarted to recognize the new tool.</li>
   <li>Now if You open the context menu of a project, You should see the entry
     'Ant Build' in the Tools submenu (see <a href="#usage">Usage</a>).</li>
   <li>Make sure the tool works as expected. Now You can remove Ant and the
     imported XML parser from Your workspace (and optionally add the IBM parser
     again).</li>
 </ul>
 <hr>
 <h2><a name="usage"></a>Usage</h2>
 Beeing sure the tool is installed correctly and your Ant build file is
 configured, it is really easy to use.<br>
 Go to your Workbench, select the project you want to deploy and open
 its context menu. In the submenu <i>Tools</i> you should find the new
 entry <i>Ant Build</i>. Klick it to start the tool!
 <p><center><img src="toolmenu.gif" border="0" height="246" width="393">
 </center></p>
 After a short time this frame should pop up:
 <p><center><img src="anttool1.gif" border="0" height="222" width="389">
 </center></p>
 This frame contains the following:
 <ul>
   <li>A menubar with some options described later</li>
   <li>The name of your selected VAJ project</li>
   <li>An entry field for the Ant XML buildfile with a browse [...] button. The
     full qualified filename, including the directory is needed here.</li>
   <li>A list with tasks specified in the buildfile. Until your first save of
     the build info (described later), this list will be empty. When loading a
     build file by the <i>Reload Project</i> button, this list is filled with
     all tasks which have a description attribute. The task you select in this
     list will be executed when pressing the <i>Execute Task</i> button.</li>
   <li>A pulldown box for specifying the log level.</li>
   <li>Three buttons. Two of them I have already described and the third one
     is just the <i>Close </i>button to exit our small tool!</li>
 </ul>
 After you have set up your buildprocess you might find it useful to save
 the data you've just entered, so we implemented an option to save it to
 the repository into your selected project. Make sure that you have an open
 edition of your project before selecting <i>Save BuildInfo To Repository</i>
 from the <i>File</i> menu. Now your information is saved to this edition
 of your project and will be loaded automatically the next time you start
 <i>Ant Build</i>.<br>
 If you have closed the log window accidentally, it can be reopened with
 the <i>Log</i> item in the <i>File</i> menu, and if you want to know who
 developed this, just select <i>About</i> in the <i>Help</i> menu.
 <br>
 <hr>
 <h2><a name="faq"></a>Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
 <p>F: I want to load, export and build more then one Visual Age project to
 one jar! How to?<br>
 A: The VA tasks are able to load and export several Projects all at
 once. You can choose whatever project you like for storing the tool
 information, it doesn't really matter.</p>
 <hr>
 <h2><a name="va_versions"></a>VisualAge for Java Versions</h2>
 This tool integration has been tested with versions 3.02 and 3.5 of VisualAge
 for Java. It should run with the 2.x Versions, too, but we didn't try.
 The graphical user interface is build with AWT so it is JDK independent
 by now!<br>
 <hr>
 <p><center>Copyright &copy; 2000 Apache Software Foundation.
 All rights Reserved.</center></p>
 </body>
 </html>
	<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en">
	<html>
	<head>
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
	<meta http-equiv="Content-Language" content="en-us">
	<title>Ant VisualAge for Java Tool Integration</title>
	</head>
	<body>
	<h1>Ant PlugIn for VisualAge for Java</h1>
	<a name="authors"></a>by
	<ul>
	<li>Wolf Siberski (<a href="mailto:wolf.siberski@tui.de">
	wolf.siberski@tui.de</a>)</li>
	<li>Christoph Wilhelms (<a href="mailto:christoph.wilhelms@tui.de">
	christoph.wilhelms@tui.de</a>)</li>
	</ul>
	Version 1.0 - 2000/11/09<br>
	<hr>
	<h2>Table of Contents</h2>
	<ul>
	<li><a href="#introduction">Introduction</a></li>
	<li><a href="#installation">Installation</a></li>
	<li><a href="#usage">Usage</a></li>
	<li><a href="#faq">Frequently Asked Questions</a></li>
	<li><a href="#va_versions">Visual Age Versions</a></li>
	</ul>
	<hr>
	<h2><a name="introduction"></a>Introduction</h2>
	Visual Age for Java is a great Java IDE, but it lacks decent build support
	for creating deliveries. On the other hand, Ant supports the build process
	very good, but is (at least at the moment) command line based. So we decided
	to write a small visual Ant frontend to make running Ant from VAJ possible.
	We use the Tool API to integrate Ant in VisualAge for Java. In combination
	with the VAJ targets (vajload, vajexport, vajimport) you can load defined
	defined versions of projects into your workspace, export the source code,
	compile it with an external compiler and build a jar without leaving the
	IDE. Of course compile messages are viewed in a logging window. Concluding:
	This tool provides a comfortable deployment VAJ has not (out of the box)!<br>
	<hr>
	<h2><a name="installation"></a>Installation</h2>
	At the moment the installation has it's rough edges. If something described
	below doesn't work for You, it's probably not Your fault but incomplete/wrong
	instructions. In this case, please contact one of the <a href="#authors">
	authors</a>.<br>
	We assume <font face="Courier">C:\IBMVJava</font> as VAJ install directory.
	If You have installed it elsewhere, adapt the pathes below. Execute following
	steps to get the PlugIn up and running:
	<ul>
	<li>import the Ant sources into VAJ.</li>
	<li>import an appropriate XML parser to VAJ (we use Xerces 1.2.0 and are
	happy with it). Unfortunately the XML parser delivered with VAJ (in the
	project 'IBM XML Parser for Java') doesn't work with Ant. You have to
	remove that project (temporarily) from the workspace before importing
	another XML implementation.</li>
	<li>Create the directory <font face="Courier">
	C:\IBMVJava\ide\tools\org-apache-tools-ant</font>.</li>
	<li>export the Ant and XML parser class files into this directory. Be sure
	to select class files and resources. Sources don't have to be exported.
	Some optional tasks have errors and can't be exported when You don't have
	the necessary packages in Your workspace (e.g. junit task, ejbc task).
	If You need this tasks either import these packages into VAJ, too,
	or copy the .class files directly from the binary distribution</li>
	<li>copy <font face="Courier">default.ini</font> (in
	<font face="Courier">jakarta-ant\src\...\taskdefs\optional\ide</font>)
	to <font face="Courier">
	C:\IBMVJava\ide\tools\org-apache-tools-ant\default.ini</font>.</li>
	<li>if  you want to access this help from the Workbench, create the
	directory <font face="Courier">
	C:\IBMVJava\ide\tools\org-apache-tools-ant\doc</font> and copy the files
	<font face="Courier">VAJAntTool.html</font>,
	<font face="Courier">toolmenu.gif</font> and
	<font face="Courier">anttool1.gif</font> to it.</li>
	<li>VAJ has to be restarted to recognize the new tool.</li>
	<li>Now if You open the context menu of a project, You should see the entry
	'Ant Build' in the Tools submenu (see <a href="#usage">Usage</a>).</li>
	<li>Make sure the tool works as expected. Now You can remove Ant and the
	imported XML parser from Your workspace (and optionally add the IBM parser
	again).</li>
	</ul>
	<hr>
	<h2><a name="usage"></a>Usage</h2>
	Beeing sure the tool is installed correctly and your Ant build file is
	configured, it is really easy to use.<br>
	Go to your Workbench, select the project you want to deploy and open
	its context menu. In the submenu <i>Tools</i> you should find the new
	entry <i>Ant Build</i>. Klick it to start the tool!
	<p><center><img src="toolmenu.gif" border="0" height="246" width="393">
	</center></p>
	After a short time this frame should pop up:
	<p><center><img src="anttool1.gif" border="0" height="222" width="389">
	</center></p>
	This frame contains the following:
	<ul>
	<li>A menubar with some options described later</li>
	<li>The name of your selected VAJ project</li>
	<li>An entry field for the Ant XML buildfile with a browse [...] button. The
	full qualified filename, including the directory is needed here.</li>
	<li>A list with tasks specified in the buildfile. Until your first save of
	the build info (described later), this list will be empty. When loading a
	build file by the <i>Reload Project</i> button, this list is filled with
	all tasks which have a description attribute. The task you select in this
	list will be executed when pressing the <i>Execute Task</i> button.</li>
	<li>A pulldown box for specifying the log level.</li>
	<li>Three buttons. Two of them I have already described and the third one
	is just the <i>Close </i>button to exit our small tool!</li>
	</ul>
	After you have set up your buildprocess you might find it useful to save
	the data you've just entered, so we implemented an option to save it to
	the repository into your selected project. Make sure that you have an open
	edition of your project before selecting <i>Save BuildInfo To Repository</i>
	from the <i>File</i> menu. Now your information is saved to this edition
	of your project and will be loaded automatically the next time you start
	<i>Ant Build</i>.<br>
	If you have closed the log window accidentally, it can be reopened with
	the <i>Log</i> item in the <i>File</i> menu, and if you want to know who
	developed this, just select <i>About</i> in the <i>Help</i> menu.
	<br>
	<hr>
	<h2><a name="faq"></a>Frequently Asked Questions</h2>
	<p>F: I want to load, export and build more then one Visual Age project to
	one jar! How to?<br>
	A: The VA tasks are able to load and export several Projects all at
	once. You can choose whatever project you like for storing the tool
	information, it doesn't really matter.</p>
	<hr>
	<h2><a name="va_versions"></a>VisualAge for Java Versions</h2>
	This tool integration has been tested with versions 3.02 and 3.5 of VisualAge
	for Java. It should run with the 2.x Versions, too, but we didn't try.
	The graphical user interface is build with AWT so it is JDK independent
	by now!<br>
	<hr>
	<p><center>Copyright © 2000 Apache Software Foundation.
	All rights Reserved.</center></p>
	</body>
	</html>