I would ask if there is any possibility to write my own plugin with GUI for Netbeans?
I have some things (e.g. files creation) that I want to do automatically depending on specification that I choose on GUI.
Related
SHORT VERSION:
In the context of a JEE6 application: What's the best way to setup an IDE-independent, master build process, in a dedicated build server (for CI / Integration test), while still using an IDE at the developer workstations? Which Java IDE is more suitable to such an approach?
LONG VERSION:
We are building a JSF2/PrimeFaces/EJB3.1 JEE6 application to be deployed on a JBoss application server. We need the EAR, WAR and JAR artefacts to be generated in a dedicated machine using an Ant script and be subject to integration testing in a CI fashion (perhaps using Jenkins).
It is also a requirement that the team will use a Java IDE (one kind only, no extra worries there). As a result, developers will produce their local artefacts for the own testing and development using their own, locally-installed IDE. However, I want the main build script on the build server to be independent of any IDE. If the IDE used by the team cannot accept and integrate closely with an externally provided Ant script this can lead to a situation where the main Ant build script will be different and will have to be maintained and evolved independently. So ideally, I would like the same hand-crafted build script to be used both by the developers' IDEs and the build server. In such a setting, if a developer sees the need to modify the Ant script, the modification reaches through git / svn the CI server and is used for subsequent builds. I am stressing "hand-crafted" since, e.g. in NetBeans case, I don't want to use the Ant build script created automatically from the IDE. See the mind-boggling minutiae one has to deal with in this approach (and which I would rather avoid), here.
Therefore I would like to know which of the major Java IDEs (Eclipse, Netbeans, IntelliJ IDEA, other?) is in your opinion more amenable to accepting an externally provided Ant script as the "project definition" and integrating closely to it (in terms of auto-complete and debug, addition of libraries, etc.). The discussion in this SO article seems relevant but is not quite the same situation as my team won't be using two different IDEs. Finally, I understand that Maven might provide a solution since NetBeans can use Maven-based projects where the Maven pom.xml is the project file and one doesn't have to deal with other IDE-specific artefacts, however there is enough Maven FUD on the web (I don't cite sources as I don't want to sidetrack the discussion) that I don't feel comfortable using it for a major undertaking without any significant prior exposure to it.
Overview
I'm using static libraries and Xcode 4 workspaces to effect modularity in iOS development, an increasingly common technique. For example, I might have a workspace which contains an App project, and a Library project, like so1:
You would then have a scheme to build these that looked something like this:
What I would like to do is have the "App build" control the "Library build" it initiates, in at least a couple of ways:
Map App configurations (e.g. Debug, AdHoc) to arbitrary Library configurations
Passing through some subset of -D defines, and/or specifying these for the library build.
I'll deal with each of these in their own section, but it's worth making a few clarifications.
Clarifications
I'm using App/Library here as an easy proxy for any Superproject/Subproject relationship you may have.
From what I've seen, Xcode 3 style embedded subprojects don't seem to work any differently in Xcode 4 than workspace "peers". I'd love to be wrong about this.
I know I could do almost anything with a "Run Build Script" build phase, and xcodebuild. But I'm trying to work within the system here, where the dependencies are specified in the scheme, and otherwise somewhat loosely coupled.
The Library exists to be used in more than just this project, and so you cannot arbitrarily load it up with junk specific to this App's build, or reference anything particular to the App or Workspace. For the general case, this rules out including static .xcconfig from the App project as a way to convey build information from the App to the Library.
Building the Library outside the workspace sacrifices too much, not an option.
Configuration Mapping
As I understand it, building a particular App configuration will:
If a configuration exists in the Library of the same name, it will build the Library using that.
Otherwise, it will build the active configuration of the Library, as specified in the Library's project file.
To my knowledge, without resorting to the aforementioned run-build-script hack, that is the extent of the control one has over subproject build configurations. Please tell me different.
Ideally, I would be able to specify (in the scheme, presumably):
AppConfigA -> LibConfig1
AppConfigB -> LibConfig2
While Debug, AdHoc, & Release may be the only configurations some ever use, complex projects often outgrow that.
Defines
I've not yet found way to pass -D defines from the App build to the Library, without resorting to xcodebuild, which can take, e.g., an .xcconfig file.
The App's build settings can be accessed in Library build run-build-script phase. However, doing that introduces a dependency in the Library on the App project, which for good reason is verboten (cf. Clarifications). But even then, I haven't found a way to use those settings to directly control the Library's build (much2).
So crazy it just might...
One scheme I came up with while writing this would be:
The Library bases it's build configurations on an empty (dummy) LibraryExternals.xcconfig file within it's own project.
A clean of Library deletes that file. A standalone build of the Library will create an empty one if it does not already exist.
That file is overwritten by an App Build run-build-script phase, and contains anything the app wants to communicate to the Library build.
Seems kind of complicated, but I'm looking for anything right now. I'll push this to an answer if nothing better comes along.
1 Apps shown are Max OS X. I find command line apps make for simpler tests. Same applies.
2 Cf. Info.plist preprocessing, which I learned about during this investigation.
If you modify your project structure to use a single project with multiple targets then each target's build settings will automatically inherit from the project. From there, you can modify ones that you want to be different, or select an individual setting and press the delete key to set it to the default specified by the project.
Is it possible to set an execution goal for maven so that the default browser is opened in a given url?
In my experience, Maven doesn't have the notion of a default system browser, nor does Java. There's some information here if you're looking to do this on Windows:
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.java.programmer/msg/bd52c25dad8c1589
That solution also says that this is a platform specific detail.
My advice would be to write your own Maven plugin (surprisingly easy to do) and just set an execution for it under the part of the lifecycle you desire. If you could give me more details of the context under which you want to open a URL, I could help you with that. In my experience, any execution you define for Maven for a phase will happen after that phase. So, setting something for the deploy phase will cause your plugin to run immediately after the artifact is uploaded.
As far as actually opening the browser is concerned, I would recommend using Selenium 2 to accomplish that:
http://code.google.com/p/selenium/wiki/GettingStarted
The nice thing about Selenium 2/WebDriver (they're in the same API) is that it takes care of the logistics of finding default installations of things like Firefox and Chrome, and knows how to interact with that browser and open a URL. You could opt for a platform inspecific default (Firefox would be a good candidate), and if you have an exception opening it, launch Internet Explorer instead (there's no longer current Safari support in Selenium 2 however).
Combining those two things, Selenium 2 inside of a Maven plugin, should accomplish your goal quite well :)
I'm working with an application that uses and manages a large amount of OSGi services and implementations for each service, with properties, dynamism and so. Using the command line of the Equinox console is useful, with commands like services or list -c . However, it is difficult to see specific implementations of services, and obtain a current snapshot of bounded or available services to consume. For example, you can see if the bundle references are satisfied, but you can't see which are the implementations of those satisfied references (although there are another mechanisms, of course).
So, the idea is to find a GUI with organized information (for example, using graphs) to increase the performance when you are developing in OSGi. Maybe there is one GUI in Eclipse plug-in perspective, but I can't find it.
If you don't know anything like this, I've in mind to create my own for my thesis :)
Eclipse has its Plug-in Registry view:
Window > Show View > Other... > Plug-in Development -> Plug-in Registry
This view comes with the Plug-in Development Environment (PDE), so you'll need to either use Eclipse Classic or Eclipse for Plug-in Developers or install it additionally through the standard Eclipse update mechanism.
The view can show the plugins, running in the current Eclipse instance and group them by plugin, extension points or services. I believe the last option is what you are searching for.
Although there was some work to make this view show remote content as well, it appears that this functionality hasn't made it to the normal Eclipse release.
Another tool, which can assist you in OSGi development is mToolkit. It is open source project, specifically aimed at helping developing in OSGi environments.
It provides similar view to the Plug-in Registry, but it only shows information about the OSGi bundles and services. It doesn't support nothing outside OSGi specification, so no plug-in registry inspection.
The Apache Felix console provides a web interface to manage OSGi services (and many other things) - I haven't tested it with Equinox but it has minimal dependencies so it should work in most OSGi environments. See http://felix.apache.org/site/apache-felix-web-console.html
I would checkout Peter Krien's Xray http://softwaresimplexity.blogspot.com/2012/07/xray-again.html
Have you looked at Knopflerfish and Apache Felix UIs? I think, they could be installed on top of Equinox as well.
I have a relatively simple goal: I want to create a Cocoa application which doesn't have much functionality itself, but is extendable through plugins. In addition I want to work on a few plugins to supply users with real functionality (and working examples).
As I am planning to make the application and each plugin separate open-source projects (and Git repositories), I'm now searching for the best way to organize my files and the Xcode projects. I'm not very experienced with Xcode and right now I don't see a simple way to get it working without copying files after building.
This is the simple monolithic setup I used for development up until now:
There's only one Xcode project with multiple products:
The main application
A framework for plugin development
Several plugin bundles
What I'm searching for is a comfortable way to split these into several Xcode projects (one for the application and framework) and one for each plugin. As my application is still in an early stage of development, I'm still changing lots of things in both the application and the plugins. So what I mean by "comfortable" is, that I don't want to copy files manually or similar inconvenience.
What I need is that the plugin projects know where they can find the current development framework and the application needs to know where it can find the development plugins. The best would be something like a inter-project dependency, but I couldn't find a way to setup something like that in Xcode.
One possible solution I have in mind is to copy both (the plugins and the framework) in a "Copy Files Build Phase" to a known location, e.g. /tmp/development, so production and development files aren't mixed up.
I think that my solution would be enough, but I'm curious if there's a better way to achieve what I want. So any suggestions are welcome.
First, don't use a static "known location" like you mention. I've worked in this kind of project; it's a royal pain. As soon as you get to the point of needing a couple of different copies of the project around (for fixing bugs in parallel, for testing a "clean" build versus your latest changes, for working on multiple branches), the builds start trashing each other and you find yourself having to do completely clean/builds much more often than you'd want.
You can create inter-project dependencies by adding the dependent project (Add File), right click the Target and choose "Get Info," and then add a Direct Dependency on the General pane.
In terms of structure, you can either put the main app and framework together, or put them in separate projects. In either case, I recommend a directory tree like:
/MyProject
/Framework
/Application
/Plugins
/Plugin1
/Plugin2
Projects should then refer to each other by relative paths. This means you can easily work on multiple copies of the project in parallel.
You can also look at a top-level build script that changes into each directory and runs "xcodebuild". I dislike complex build scripts (we have one; it's called Xcode), but if all it does is call "xcodebuild" with parameters if needed, then a simple build script is useful.