Created in: 2007-06-03 20:14:21
Author: martin
Size: 0 bytes
Last updated: 2007-06-03 20:14:21
General description
jLibrary build deployment system is based on well known Apache ant. All the ant build files are located on the org.jlibrary.client project root directory. Instead of having a single build.xml file, the build system has been divided into several files:
Requirements
Obviously, to run the ant scripts you have to download Apache Ant. However, I'm going to explain how to create releases with Eclipse IDE which already includes Ant support.
There is another requirement to create jLibrary releases, but it's optional. It is optional because you only must fulfil it if you want to create an installer for the client deployable. If you want to create final release files you'll need to have installed NSIS installer system. URL. Once you have downloaded and installe NSIS then you must specify the nsis.executable property pn the build.properties file. This property must point to the place where is the NSIS executable file nsis.exe. Note that, as NSIS only works on Windows platform, this is a requirement only for Windows platform releases.
Creating a release
Before creating a release you must edit jLibrary build.properties file located on the org.jlibrary.client project and change the values with your environment values, like the path for your virtual machine, eclipse location or the NSIS location if you are going to build an installer.
After doing this, you should open the Ant view if you have not opened it yet. Go to Eclipse's Window menu, then Show view, and select Ant view. Ant view will appear on your perspective:
The next step is to load the main build file. This file is deploy.xml that we saw previously. Click on the ant button and select the org.jlibrary.client/deploy.xml file. The main build file will appear into the Ant view showing all the available targets:
As you can see, the default target is deploy. So you only have to select it, and press the play button and the build process will start.
The build process can take several minutes depending on your machine. The deploy target will create a directory called dist under your Eclipse workspace. Within that directory several directories will be created with the format yyyymmdd and within that directories you'll find the releases. For example, if you perform a build on the December, 20, 2005, you'll have an structure like the following:
The directory contents are:
And that's all. If you want to create an installer and zip releases then instead of using the deploy target you have to use the distribute target.
I hope you enjoy creating jLibrary releases :-)