Sphinx/environment

This page aims at providing a procedure to get Sphinx sources and settle a development environment.

Setting the Eclipse environment

Before getting Sphinx, the first step consists in setting the required Eclipse environment. The principle consists in using a minimal environment for the edition, and an adapted target platform to compile and run Sphinx.

Install Eclipse

No comments.

Install a Subversion client

We recommend the use of Subversive. Subversive may be installed from the following update sites:

• http://download.eclipse.org/technology/subversive/0.7/update-site/
• http://www.polarion.org/projects/subversive/download/eclipse/2.0/update-site/

Install the following feature groups:

• Subversive SVN Team Provider Plugin (Incubation)
• Subversive SVN Connectors

SVN checkout

SVN repository configuration

Create a new SVN repository with the following attributes:

• URL: https://dev.eclipse.org/svnroot/modeling/org.eclipse.mdt.sphinx (caution: https, not http)
• User: <empty>
• Password: <empty>

Import the project set

Sphinx provides a project set that lists all the Sphinx plug-ins/projects.

• Browse the SVN repository
• Check-out the project trunk/tools/org.eclipse.sphinx.psf

Import the sources

Once the project set is downloaded, it is easy to check-out the whole Sphinx project sources.

• Browse the org.eclipse.sphinx.psf project in your workspace
• Right-click on file all-subversive.psf
• Click on Import Project Set...

All the projects of Sphinx are then checked out in your workspace. They are automatically organized into several working sets.

Setting the target platform

(cf. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=340589)

Download of the target platform

Sphinx provides target platform definitions for the two last Eclipse releases. These target definitions are in the project org.eclipse.sphinx.targetdefs which is part of the Tools working set.

• Open the target definition file xxx.target that corresponds to your Eclipse release;
• Wait for the completion of the Resolving Target Definition task. This may take a while. If errors occur, try to close and reopen the target definition file to resolve anew the dependencies ;
• Click on link Set as Target Platform (upper right corner of the target editor).

Patch of target platform items

Some components of the target platform have to be patched to fix bugs.

To be continued

Optimizing the target platform (optional)

The previous solution works fine but has drawbacks. For each workspace Eclipse will download in cache a new full target platform. This is generally not not a problem, except for people who use several workspaces that would share the same target platform. A solution consists in recreating a local target platform.

• Redo the previous procedure with a new workspace, without loading any other target platform. This is recommended to not embedded useless plug-ins;
• Create a directory in your local file system;
• Create an environment variable called SPHINX_TARGETS that refers to this directory;
• Create a subdirectory target-3.6;
• Copy the content of <workspace>/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.pde.core/.bundle_pool in target-3.6;
• Open preferences by clicking on menu Window/Preferences and select Plug-in Development/Target Platform;
• Click on Add... to create a new target platform definition;
• Start with Nothing, that is an empty target definition and click Next >;
• Give a name: Sphinx Eclipse 3.6 local;
• Select the Locations tab and click Add...;
• Select Directory and click Next >;
• Provide the location: ${env_var:SPHINX_TARGETS}/target-3.6 and click Finish;
• Click Finish to end the definition of the target;
• Select the new target definition and click Share...
• Enter the parent folder org.eclipse.sphinx.targetdefs and the file name 3.6_local;
• Check the box in front of the target definition and click OK.

Remark: The use of an environment variable is not mandatory. It is just cleaner for future management of target platforms.

Creating an EMF example library model

The example project that is provided with Sphinx makes use of the library model coming from EMF. Thus, we have to get it to be able to compile everything. This dependency should be removed in the future (cf. https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=338657).

Installing EMF SDK

First, we have to install EMF SDK in the Eclipse environment.

• Open menu Help/Install New Software...;
• Select work with Helios;
• Install EMF - Eclipse Modeling Framework SDK in Modeling category.

Creating the library model projects

• Open menu File/New/Other...;
• Select Examples/Eclipse Modeling Framework/Extended Library Model Example;
• Finish the creation and rebuild if necessary the sources.