Configuring Eclipse for Zcore development

Submitted by ckelley on Wed, 12/30/2009 - 16:17

Setup Eclipse IDE

Download Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/

Go to Help -> Install New Software.

Add Update sites:

From the update site for your Eclipse version (in this case, Helios - http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios), install:

  • Eclipse RCP Plug-in Developer Resources
  • Subversive SVN Team Provider (Incubation)

Drop the following plugins into the dropins folder:

  • tarlog.eclipse.plugins_1.4.2.jar – http://code.google.com/p/tarlog-plugins/ - provides Open in explorer, which is very useful.
  • Webkit4swt – download from http://www.myeclipseide.com/Downloads-req-getit-lid-157.html , unzip and add the following to dropins:
    • com.genuitec.blinki.webkit.swt.win32_0.6.0.200910272250.jar
    • com.genuitec.blinki.webkit.swt_0.6.0.200910272250.jar

After restarting eclipse, go to Windows -> Preferences -> Team -> SVN. A new window should pop up asking you to install a connecter. Use JavaHL 1.5.4 Win32 Binaries

Configure the Project in Eclipse

  • Checkout the zcore project - see downloads page for svn url.
  • Install the zcore project using its executable. You will be deploying the code to this install.
  • Creating a server config in Eclipse: Point the server path to the zcore installation root. Select "Use Tomcat Installation" and deploy path should be webapps.

    Eclipse server config
  • Increase the memory available in the runtime settings:
    -Xms256m -Xmx1g -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -Dcatalina.base="C:\zcore-base" -Dcatalina.home="C:\zcore-base" -Dwtp.deploy="C:\zcore-base\webapps" -Djava.endorsed.dirs="C:\zcore-base\endorsed"

Point the source property in resources/dev.properties to your source code.

This value is used by Dynasite system - XML files used for rendering of webpages. If this file does not exist in the tomcat filesystem (in classes/resources) at runtime, then when you add//edit forms/fields, the XML files will be rendered to the Constants.pathToCatalinaHome + "/webapps/zcoreProject/WEB-INF/ path, instead of your source code path.

When you are rendering a war for deployment, it is a good idea to have this file in place and pointed to your source code. It's also a good idea to do a generate source code in the Admin page to make sure you've got all of the latest changes to your forms available. It can be frustrating to do a build, and not have your modifications updated, because all of your fields were not rendered. In practice though, I usually skip this step, because the application updates that happen when the server restart are working reliably.