You are hereBuilding Aria from source
Building Aria from source
Building Aria from the source code is possible within both the NetBeans and the Eclipse IDEs. All of the source is available from the SourceForge repository. The project's SourceForge.net Subversion repository can be checked out through SVN with the following instruction set:
svn co https://aria.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/aria aria
(Warning: This is a generic Subversion checkout command which will pull all modules, tags and/or branches of the project).
Project source layout
The source code is laid out in a number of packages, as follows:
| Folder/Package | Role |
| AriaRuntimeCommon | Contains all the source code, resources and build files for the runtime libraries. |
| AriaEditorCommon | Source common to both the NetBeans and Eclipse projects |
| AriaEditorEclipse | An Eclipse specific project for building the Eclipse plugin |
| AriaEditorNetBeansSuite | A collection of projects for building the NetBeans plugin. Most of the sub-projects are merely wrappers for the plugin’s dependancies. |
| AriaMobileMidp | A version of Aria for MIDP. This project is developed in parallel to AriaRuntimeCommon and has diverging source. |
| lib | A collection of libraries needed for the Aria projects. |
| other | Contains non Java code for ‘other’ clients stubs. |
| samples | A collection of sample projects and utilities |
| docs | The source FrameMaker documents that go to making up this manual. |
Building the runtime libraries
The runtime libraries are built using the latest version of NetBeans (6.1 at the time of writing), using the AriaRuntimeCommon project. The project also uses JDK 1.6, although it compiles for earlier JDKs.
To build the runtime you will need to download the main project plus the following libraries or packages from the lib folder described above in “Top level projects” on page 46:
| Library | Description |
| beanshell | Libraries for BeanShell scripting support |
| commons | Apache Common libraries. including commons-codec. |
| The Google translation service API | |
| hsqldb | The hsqldb library which is used in some samples for off-line or lightweight database access. Aria includes some support for packaging hsqldb databases in the jars distributed with Java Web Start |
| itext | The iText library for PDF generation (export functionality) |
| jakarta | The Jakarta regular expression library, plus the BCEL library for byte code manipulation (used for DTO class generation). |
| jdic | SwingLab’s JDIC project used for system tray and browser integration. |
| jmf | The Java Media Framework used for video and audio support. |
| netscape | Netscape’s JavaScript integration support |
| jxl | Excel export |
| jgoodies | JGoodies look and feel support libraries |
| multisplit | SwingLab’s MultiSplit layout manager (incidentally maintained by Aria contributors). |
| swt | Eclipse SWT libraries |
| tomcat | The servlet API |
| svgSalamander | SVG widget and rendering support |
| tablelayout | An advanced layout manager |
| timingframework | SwingLab’s animation and timing library |
| xalan | XML support |
In addition to these libraries, some libraries from the Java runtime and JDK are employed. All of these libraries are referenced from relative paths, so if you download the libraries, preserving the directory structure the project should build without modification.
The default build target will generate the runtime libraries in a number of forms:
| Library | Contents |
| AriaRuntimeCommon.jar | The complete runtime library include all versions of the widgets. |
| AriaRuntimeCore_<version>.jar | The core library minus any widgets |
| AriaRuntimeAwt_<version>.jar | The AWT specific widgets |
| AriaRuntimeSwing_<version>.jar | The Swing specific widgets |
| AriaRuntimeSwt_<version>.jar | The SWT specific widgets |
The version number is appended to the library name in the form version_date, for example AriaRuntimeCommon_1.0.0.v20080726.jar. At present the build produces a Java 6 version , but this will be extended to include support for earlier JDKs and when this is done the JDK version will also be appended to the jar name.
The default build will also copy the AriaRuntimeCommon.jar file to the libs/aria folder which is references by many of the sample projects and applications, so that these applications are always using the latest build. Periodically this library is also commited to SVN (when any significant change is made).
Building the NetBeans plugin from source
Once you have built the runtime environment as described above you can begin to build the NetBeans plugin. The plugin relies on the runtime, running on the same code as the end user applications, but for distribution as part of a plugin the runtime must first be bundled as an installable module for NetBeans.
Indeed, this process of wrapping the runtime libraries or dependancies is used for all the extrenal jars needed by the plugin and for wrapping the code shared with the Eclipse plugin. A suite of modules is therefore used to create the plugin, and this is called the AriaNetBeansSuite.
The source and project files for all plugin modules is again available from the SourceForge SVN repository (see “Subversion access” on page 46). To build the project first open the AriaNetBeansSuite project, when this is opened you will be prompted to open all the module projects within the suite. Most of these modules are merely static wrappers for the plugin’s libraries, apart from the following:
| Folder/Package | Role |
| AriaRuntimeCommonModule | Contains all the source code, resources and build files for the runtime libraries. |
| AriaRuntimeCommonModule | A wrapper for the runtime library, the library wrapped by this module is updated dynamically when the module builds, so it wraps the latest runtime library. |
| AriaEditorCommon | Source common to both the NetBeans and Eclipse projects |
| AriaEditorCommonModule | A wrapper for AriaEditorCommon project, operating in the same way as the runtime module so that the wrapper uses the latest build of the common module |
| AriaEditorNetBeansSuite | A collection of projects for building the NetBeans plugin. Most of the sub-projects are merely wrappers for the plugin’s dependancies. |
All the projects have dependancies on the required modules so doing a clean and build on the suite will build everything, including the runtime environment.
The project can be built within NetBeans project view by right clicking on the AriaEditorNetBeansSuite project and choosing Build NBMs. The result of the build is a set of NBM files in the AriaNetBeansSuite/build/updates folder together with the updates.xml file.
Once the modules have been build you can either deploy the contents of the directory or launch the editor in a hosted version of NetBeans by clicking either Run or Debug
To launch the plugin from within NetBeans copy the netbeans_clusters folder to the targets folder and then run the nbm:run-ide goal by right clicking the project in the projects view.
Building the Eclipse plugin from source
The process for building the Eclipse plugin is pretty much just a case of downloading the sourec from SVN, opening the project and building. The Eclipse plugin is a single project contained in the AriaEditorEclipse folder.
One possible complication is that the ARIA_PROJECT_ROOT variable needs to be set. Within the Eclipse Window | Preferences | Java | Build Path | Classpath Variables dialog the variable can be added or configured to suit your environment’s setup.
Building the sample applications from source
At present the sample applications are only setup within NetBeans. Most of the applications are self contained and refer to libraries within the Aria SVN hierarchy (within the libs folder). One exception to this is the MetroBank example that contains a web server application which relies on the Spring framework.
Since the Spring framrwork is a large and complex environment it is not included with the Aria SVN repository and is instead referenced by the project via some private settings. Within the nbproject/private/private.properties folder there are some settings that will need to be adjusted to match your setup before the build will success. These settings are:
| Setting | Role |
| spring.libraries=C:\\Tools\\spring-framework-2.5.4\\lib | Points to the root folder of the Spring distribution. Use Spring 2.5.x. See http://www.springframework.org/ |
| spring.modules=C:\\Tools\\spring-modules-0.9-with-dependencies | References the root of the Spring Modules installation. (see https://springmodules.dev.java.net/) |
| spring.security=C:\\Tools\\spring-security-2.0.2 | References the root of the Spring Security installation (formerly Acegi, see http://static.springframework.org/spring-security/site/). |
The Metrobank sample is split into two parts, the client and the server parts. More info about this example can be found later in this manual