I was recently given some code that was worked on by someone other than myself, and after lots of work involving hunting down external dependencies, and editing the build.xml file to get ANT to build things in a sane way, I'd like to now get the code into a subversion repository.
The team I'm working on is rather small, but the members on the team change often. So I want people to be able to start working on this code as quickly as possible. A simple checkout from the repository, and opening the project in Netbeans to have everything building and executing properly would be ideal.
How do I achieve this when there are external dependencies that are not going to be on other team members machines?
Should I place the libraries my project uses in the VCS?
How do I instruct subversion to not track generated files such as class files and jar files?
Should binary resources that are unlikely to change such as images and sounds be placed in the VCS? If not what would be the best way to distribute them?
Thank you.
1) yes. Anything needed to build and deploy the application and isn't generated by the build process goes into version control (yah, I know the maven fanz don't like that).
2) make sure everything that's generated goes into distinct directories that you exclude from version control.
3) see 1). Same thing. Same with project documentation, release notes, etc. etc.
The biggest problem of course are directory names which will be set in your IDEs configuration files and differ between development machines.
Not just the location of the project directories, but the IDE itself, JDKs and other tools, appservers, can all be different between machines. It's a constant problem.
I usually use maven cause you can have a repository for jars and dependencies this makes life easier, but since you have already refactor your code to use ANT maybe this is not what you want, to use subversion with netbeans then you might want to add another folder for jars like libs or something and then another for the binaries like audio etc. Also check for the svn plugin for netbeans it will add the ignore to the dir and just update java files.
To add files to ignore you can use
svn propset svn:ignore -F .
or you can look for the config file in your subversion home and add something like this
global-ignores=*.classs
Hope this helps
Related
The IntelliJ 2017.2 documentation suggests including the .idea folder that contains that IDE’s own configuration files (excepting the workspace.xml and tasks.xml files). I can understand the sense in this, as I could incorrectly configure the project settings and want to revert.
Yet, I want to post this open-source multi-module Maven-driven project to BitBucket for public access. Obviously, not everybody uses IntelliJ as their IDE, so I do not want to force my IDE settings on them.
➠ How do open-source authors resolve this conundrum?
My suggestion that comes from experience is to always explicitly ignore (that is, add to .hgignore or .gitignore) IDE configuration files or directories.
It is not only a question of not spamming a project with configuration files for a specific IDE. The real problem begins when more that one person uses the same IDE. Depending on the IDE and on how it is configured, you can fall in a situation where each commit contains changes to these files, and will confuse all the other developer using the same IDE, which in turn will overwrite the changes again in a infinite loop.
Some of your IDE settings will be global and stored in your home directory. The ones that are project specific will survive as long as you don't change the local directory in which you cloned the repo. If you change directory, in my experience it is always tolerable to reconfigure the IDE. There are at least two situations when the local directory changes: (1) you remove the directory and clone the repository again (2) you use more than one computer.
If you are concerned for things like coding style, then the best approach is to use a command-line formatter tool that works for any editor or IDE. That tool will have its configuration file committed in the repo, since coding style is something that should be equal for all developers and files of a repo.
I have a project that uses a lot of external libraries (mostly .jar files). I am using Eclipse Helios Service Release 2.
When something doesn't work, the problem is usually caused by missing jars or some problem with classpath. What I have to do, is to check that all necessary jars are correctly included in my classpath.
The problem is that I have several libraries imported + external jars (in case of libraries, the classpath only points to the directory with the jars) and Eclipse provides no easy way to search for included jars. If there was any kind of function that would work like this: "search for xyz.jar" and find if the jar with given name is already included somewhere, instead of manually controlling this, it would be a great help.
It would also help if Eclipse provided a function to sort all the jars and libraries by name instead of displaying them in the same order they are specified in path (I mean only in the project manager, of course).
So my question: is there an easy way to check these things or do I have to do that manually? I have cca 30 jars to include and cca 300 already there and this is a real pain...
You could use a build environment, such as Maven, to manage your dependencies for you. Then Eclipse does zero thinking on its own and your life becomes far more pleasant (particularly when the time comes to package your code for release).
I couldn't imagine managing 300+ dependencies any other way.
I'm a new configuration manager at my company and I am starting a project to clean up much of our build process.
We have oodles of jars we have put away in one Subversion project. Some people copy these jars to their projects. Others put an SVN:External on their project to this directory. Others have a convoluted way of copying in these jars. These are the only jars that we're suppose to use.
I'm moving over to Ivy and maybe to Maven. I've setup a Maven repository, and have identified these jar's GroupId, ArtifactId, and Version and have documented how to access the ones you need via Ivy and Maven configurations.
I want to go through all the projects' source files, find all the import statements, and compare those imports against all the classes these jars contain.
I want to find all the jars that a given set of sources call directly. For example, if a jar contains:
import org.apache.commons.beanutils.*
I know it needs commons-beanutils.jar (version 1.6). I also know that it needs commons-logging.jar, but I'll let Maven and Ivy handle that issue. I just want to tell the developer when they create their pom.xml or ivy.xml, they'll need to include common-beanutils#common-beansutil#1.6 in their pom.xml or ivy.xml file.
I know this won't be a complete list. I know there will be jars needed for runtime, but not compile. I also know there are classes that can work with multiple jars. I also now developers could do this:
import org.apache.commons.*;
which would match with dozens of jars and tell me nothing. (Maybe there's a way to figure out what classes are actually used in the Java source files).
I could write a Python or Perl script that could probably do this, but I was hoping there was something already around that could save me several hours of work. I know about TattleTale by JBoss, but the documentation seem to say it only works with jars and shows dependencies between jars, etc. I'm not really interested in that. I just want to know what jars our sources are calling and let Ivy and Maven handle deeper dependencies.
Any such tools?
Addendum
Just to be more specific. This is an old project. In fact, there are 50 or so projects. We know that a particular project needs 20 jars to run, and tools like TattleTail can go through and show you the whole data analysis.
However, let's look at it from a developer's view point. I have a problem, and I find an open source project that will solve my problem. I read the docs, write my code and import the classes I need. I know the jar for that open source project that contains the classes, and that's pretty much all I know.
What I want to do is get back to the original developer's mindset: I used these classes in this project, and I need these 5 jars. That those 5 jars may need another 15 to run is something that Ivy/Maven will now handle. We know the 20 jars that program needs. I just want the 5 that the developers originally referred to in their code.
This is to help the developers write their pom.xml or ivy.xml. I don't want them putting all 20 jars in that pom.xml or that ivy.xml file -- just the five they need.
This is just a starting point. They might have imported com.foo.bar.bar.foo and that class is in foo-all.jar, foo-client.jar, and bar-talk.com. The developers will have to decide which one of these their project needs.
This is a massive paradigm shift in our programming, but we are losing track of jars and versions, and making sure all of these projects can talk to each other. Using Ivy/Maven will greatly simplify this mess.
Tattletale ended up giving me the first level of dependencies which is what I need to build my ivy.xml or pom.xml file. It misses one or two occasionally, but otherwise it works pretty good.
Alright, so I have a web service that was created using an eclipse dynamic web project. It is currently shared on a CVS repository, but the versioning system used is irrelevant. At the moment, I have literally NEVER been able to pull this project out as is and get it working. It leads to countless errors that cannot be fixed. Every time I need to work on this webservice in a new machine I have to create an entirely new dynamic project, copy over the source files, add all the necessary libraries and make the deployment assembly work correctly again. After finally making it run I share the project as the same one, stop after a second, and then synchronize again (in a way tricking eclipse into thinking this was the shared project all along).
I feel like others must have run into this problem and found a way around it. So if you have a web service or any dynamic web project, what files do you share, and how do you successfully pull it from the repository and get it to run on another machine besides what I currently do now?
Your help is much appreciated,
-Asaf
Edit: After reading some of the responses I feel that this question is actually more specific to those who use WTP to create/test their web services. Just wanted to add the clarification.
Edit2: Let me also clarify that the other 20 or so projects not using WTP are shared just fine. I am able to pull and run them with no problem. Only web service projects are an issue.
In general, you want to check in everything that's not "derived" (generated or compiled - that's usually the contents of the bin directory or other place where your code is compiled/built into). For Eclipse Java projects, you want to include the .project, .classpath, .settings, and any other similar files that Web Tools might create for Dynamic Web projects. The Eclipse CVS client will ignore files marked as Derived so you shouldn't have to worry to much about it.
Without more detail about what kind of problems you've run into, it's not possible to guess what was causing them. My only guess is that perhaps you had different versions of Eclipse and/or the WTP (Web Tools Platform) plugins installed on the different machine. That's just a wild guess, but could explain some incompatibility when you check out the project from CVS.
Bottom line, checking in those .* files is the long recommended approach from Eclipse gurus. Maven can kind of change things, but you didn't mention it so I'm assuming you aren't using it.
I am primarily sharing my experience, may be you can find some help.
Conceptually speaking, the files which the IDE can generate itself while creating new project should not be pushed. I.e the IDE specific files should not be pushed. And everything which the IDE cannot generate on its own must be pushed.
Forexample in case of eclipse, following files should not be pushed:
.settings
build
.classpath
.project
For setting the project on new machine, first pull the files from server, and then create a project from IDE using pulled files.
EDIT: If your project has external jars/libraries, then you will have to add to the classpath manually. You could also push .classpath but that might give errors while creating a new project.
I think it's easiest to use a build system and let the IDE generate the project from your build system.
Eclipse, Netbeans, and Intellij are all pretty good at building projects from maven or ant build files. With this solution you have a simple build that is easy to setup in CI (Hudson, Bamboo, whatever) and you don't have any IDE specific files checked in. If my workspace is totally different than yours, with different versions, plugins, whatever, I'm not stuck with your project file and you're not stuck with mine. My IDE creates the project appropriate for my environment and your IDE does the same for yours.
Since you mentioned having to manually add libraries, I assume you are not using any build manager (like, maven or ant) besides ecplise.
For ecplise to handle the project properly you need the source files (*.java) in their respective directories, any resources bundled with the web service (e.g. services.xml), the ".project", ".classpath", ".settings", etc. files for eclipse. This should be enough for eclipse to generate anything else necessary to build the project.
Any files/directories that are generated by eclipse during the build process (e.g. target & bin directory, *.class, *.war) should not be checked in -- they will be generated when needed during the build.
I am thinking that, since you are adding the necessary 3rd-party jars manually, these libraries might reside in a different path between computers (e.g. if the path contains the username, it will not be transferable to another computer for a different user). To fix that you can set up the classpath using an eclipse classpath variable. In Preferences->Java->Build Path->Classpath Variables set up a varable linked to the "root" folder where the 3rd party jars a stored. Then add the libraries to the project using this new variable, not their full path. To make it work on someone else's computer, you would only need to set this classpath variable to have the build path point to the correct libraries.
It might be beneficial if you migrated your project from eclipse only to a build manager (e.g. maven) that takes care of many of these issues for you. Eclipse can build a project from the configuration of the build manager, making it easier to manage the project.
I'm writing a java app using eclipse which references a few external jars and requires some config files to be user accessable.
What is the best way to package it up for deployment?
My understanding is that you cant put Jars inside another jar file, is this correct?
Can I keep my config files out of the jars and still reference them in the code? Or should the path to the config file be a command line argument?
Are there any third party plugins for eclipse to help make this easier? I'm using an ant build file at the moment but I'm not sure I know what I'm doing.
Is there an equivelent of the deployment projects in Visual studio, that will figure out everything you need and just make an installer? I've used install4j before, and it was powerful if no where near as automated as .Net deployment projects.
Cheers.
There is no one 'best way'. It depends on whether you are deploying a swing application, webstart, applet, library or web application. Each is different.
On point 2, you are correct. Jar files cannot contain other jar files. (Well, technically they can, its just that the inner jar file won't be on your classpath, effectively meaning that jar files do not contain jar files).
On point 3, you certainly can reference config files outside the jar file. You can typically reference a config file as a file or a resource. If you use the resource approach, it typically comes from the classpath (can be in a jar). If you use a file, then you specify the filename (not in a jar).
In general, most Java developers would use Apache Ant to achieve deployment. Its well documented, so take a look.
(1) An alternative to ant that you may wish to consider is maven.
A brief intro to maven can be found here.
For building a JAR, maven has the jar plugin, which can automate the process of ensuring all dependent jars are listed in your jar's manifest.
If you're using eclipse, then download the maven integration as well.
(2) Another alternative is to use OneJar (disclaimer: haven't tried this myself).
The answers vary depending on what kind of thing you're building.
If you're building a library, it's best to distribute your work as a jar file. It's possible to refer to your jar dependencies via the Class-path attribute in your jar manifest, although I generally think that's uncool. That attribute was designed for applets and it's used infrequently enough in libs that when this technique pulls stuff into the classpath (particularly common stuff the user might already be using), you can get unexpected version conflicts. And it's hard to track down why you're seeing them.
Publishing a jar to a Maven repo with pom info to track dependencies is an excellent choice for libraries as well. If you do that, please publish your Maven coordinates in your docs!
If you're building an app, the two popular choices are to distribute a zip/tar/whatever of a deployment structure OR to use an installer program. If the program is a server-ish kind of thing, the former is far more common. The latter is more common for clients. Generally, the installer program is just going to lay out the deployment structure and maybe do some extra tasks like installing in OS-specific locations.
To build your deployment structure (aka "kit") you'll want to create a repeatable process in whatever build system you're using. Ant has copious examples of this and Maven has the assembly plugins that can help. Generally you'll want to include a jar of your code, any dependencies, scripts to start the program, maybe a JRE, and any other resources you might need.
If you want to create an installer, there are many options both free and commercial. Some folks I know have recently had good experiences with the free IzPack but check out your options.
You should try FatJar. It's an Eclipse plugin that with just a right click at the Project can build a JAR file with all you need to run the application, including the necesary third party JAR.
We use it everyday, in conjuction with JSmooth to create the executables, to deploy our software packages to our customers, and works like a charm.
Well, if you are speaking of deployment of a standalone desktop application:
Before we switched to web start we have been creating three deployment archives, one for windows, one for mac and one for other platforms.
On windows we have successfully used the Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (known for it's usage by the older winamp versions) and its ant task, although some drawbacks are:
It is only usable on windows AFAIR
You have to do some work by hand, i.e. customizing the wizard-created script AFAIR
It can create a windows installation with start menu entries on the other hand. There also exists an eclipse plugin for integrated NSIS shell script editing.
On Mac OS X there is an ant task to create an .app file from your java files so that you can start it like a native os x application. But beware of not writing any setting to your home dir and using the the application dir instead.
For others you have to expect they are in a un*x env and deploy your app with a shell script to start the application.
In any case you may have to deploy your custom policy file to get access rights for your application.
If you want to get rid of all the packaging and stuff you should seriously consider using web start. We have saved much time since switching to it, i.e. simplified our deployment process, takes care of updates etc.
Update 2014
Use maven assembly plugin, see section "Creating an executable jar"
Ant. It's not the best thing in the world, but it's standard, it's apache, and it works.
There's some good examples on the web how to make a simple build.xml for any, and it's got some features like the 'war' task that knows how to put all the basic stuff (classes, web.xml etc) in the jar file for you.
You can also tell it to pick up other config files and jars and it will happily do it.
It's also really smart about what to compile. You give it a directory, and it finds all the java files and builds them only if their classfile is out of date, so you get some of the traditional make functionality for free without much effort.
You could look at other java projects (e.g. JMeter, SquirrelSQL, JEdit, Cernunnos, etc.). Each package their applications slightly differently, so consider your goals when you review these.