Revision as of 14:06, 11 March 2015

This page describes how to setup the Trace Compass development environment.

Note that this should only be required if you want to make modifications to the code or contribute patches. If you only want to run the plugin as a user, you would probably be better served by the stable or nightly builds, available on this page.

Get the Eclipse SDK

Under eclipse.org downloads, select the Eclipse IDE for Eclipse Committers archive. You can start with any Eclipse pre-package, but make sure you have the Eclipse Plug-in Development Environment feature installed.

Uncompress and start Eclipse. Example for Linux:

$ tar xzvf eclipse-standard-luna-SR1-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gzz
$ cd eclipse
$ ./eclipse

The first time you run it, it will ask for a workspace directory. You can use the default location.

You will then be greeted by the welcome screen, which you can dismiss by clicking the Workbench arrow in the upper-right corner.

Get the source code for org.eclipse.tracecompass

First, make sure you have a Git client installed (either the git command-line tool, or the Eclipse Git Team Provider plugin, also available in Eclipse's "Install New Software").

Then, simply clone the following repository somewhere on your hard drive:

• git://git.eclipse.org/gitroot/tracecompass/org.eclipse.tracecompass.git

Import the Trace Compass projects into the workspace

• Select "File -> Import..."
• Select "General -> Existing Projects into Workspace"
• Next to "Select root directory" click "Browse..."
• Navigate to the directory where you git clone'd the project earlier.
• It should now list the available plugins. Make sure they are all checked and click "Finish".
• The plugins should now be added to your workspace, and visible in the Package Explorer view on the left.

You will probably get a bunch of build errors at this point. DON'T PANIC! This is because Trace Compass needs additional dependencies that might not be present in your current Eclipse installation. We will install those in the following section.

Set the Target Platform

Eclipse offers the ability to set target platforms, which will download a specific environment to run your plugins, without having to "pollute" your Eclipse install. Trace Compass ships target definition files, which is the recommended way of installing its dependencies.

To set the target platform for the Trace Compass plugins:

• Expand the "org.eclipse.tracecompass.target" project.
• Double-click the .target file that corresponds to your Eclipse version (tracecompass-e4.4.target, at the time of this writing).
• In the view that just opened, click Set as Target Platform on the top right.

Eclipse will now download the required dependencies, which may take some time the first time.

If you wish to switch target platforms in the future, you can come back to this plugin, or you can go to "Window -> Preferences -> Plug-in Development -> Target Platform". From that page, you can switch between any of the known targets, or your base Eclipse runtime.

Define an API baseline (optional)

Since Trace Compass is aiming to be out of incubation with its 1.0 release, all API changes have to be tracked and marked with the proper @since annotations. The Eclipse API tool works by comparing the contents of the current workspace with a clean, separate installation of Eclipse in another directory (the "baseline").

If you will only be using this setup to run the latest git code, you can decide to ignore these errors by performing these steps:

• Select "Window -> Preferences -> Plug-in Development -> API Baselines"
• Under "Options -> Missing API baseline:" select "Ignore"
• Click "OK"

However, if you intend of hacking at the code and contributing patches, then you are strongly encouraged to setup a baseline installation correctly:

Download the baseline install

• Go to http://eclipse.org/downloads and download a copy of the Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers, if you don't already have one. The exact version does not really matter, as we will install the latest Trace Compass next.
• Extract it in a directory somewhere, separate from your normal Eclipse installation. We will call this new installation the baseline.

Update the baseline

The baseline needs to be updated with the latest version of Trace Compass. Intermediate releases might not be part of the base Eclipse install, so they have to be downloaded from the update site. To verify if you have the latest version, and update it if needed:

• Run your baseline installation of Eclipse (cd to its directory and run ./eclipse).
  • To be safe, select a different workspace that the one for your real installation (you can use a workspace/ subdirectoy under the baseline's eclipse/ directory for example).

• Dismiss the splash screen and go to "Help -> Install New Software".
• In the new window, click on the Available Software Sites link at the top.
• In the following window, check the box next to the Trace Compass repository. If it's not present, you can add it, the URL is:
  • http://download.eclipse.org/tracecompass/stable/repository/

• Click OK until you go back to the first window, then on the drop-down menu, select --All Available Sites--.
• Uncheck Group items by category in the bottom part of the window.
• In the list, open the Trace Compass subtree, and check all the features underneath.
  • If you do not see any Trace Compass entries, it means you already have the latest versions installed. This may happen if you downloaded a Service Release that includes the latest Trace Compass stable release. You can skip the rest and go back to your real Eclipse.

• Click Next, Next, Finish. The new versions of the plugins will be downloaded and installed.
• Eclipse will offer to restart at this point. It might be a good idea to restart and make sure that the correct versions are installed.

Once you are done, close the baseline Eclipse. You should never have to run this installation, other than to update it.

Set up your regular Eclipse to use the baseline

• In your regular Eclipse install, go to "Window -> Preferences -> Plug-in Development -> API Baselines".
• Click on "Add Baseline..."
• In the new window click "Browse...", and point it to the directory of the baseline Eclipse install you set up earlier.
• Give your baseline a name, then click "Finish".

Once that is done, your workspace will be rebuilt and the API changes will now be tracked. Any new method or class will have to be annotated with "@since n", where n is the major.minor version number found in the plugin's MANIFEST.MF file.

Build the documentation (optional)

If you imported the *.help plugins (which contain the user and developer guides), you might notice warnings in these plugins because of missing files. It is because the documentation plugins need to be built using a separate component. If you do not care for the documentation, you can ignore those warnings, or even remove those plugins from your workspace.

On the other hand, if you want to build or work on the documentation (which you should do if you add user-visible features!), here is how to build it.

First you need to install the Mylyn-Wikitext Eclipse plugin:

• Go to "Help -> Install New Software..."
• Select "-- All Available Sites--"
• In the list of available plugins, select "Collaboration -> Mylyn Wikitext", and click Next/Finish to install it.
• Restart Eclipse

You can now build the documentation plugins:

• Click on one of the *.help projects
• In the top menu, click "Project -> Build Project"
• After it is built, the warning should disappear, and the HTML files should be present in its doc/ subdirectory.

Note that this builder does not run automatically ; Ant is not very smart at figuring out which files were changed, so it would end up constantly rebuilding the doc plugins for nothing. For this reason, if you modify the source (.mediawiki) files, you will have to rebuild the HTML manually, using the same method.

Run (or Debug) the plugins

To run (or debug) the code, start a nested Eclipse with the plugins loaded:

• Right-click the "org.eclipse.tracecompass.tmf.core" plugin
• Select "Run As -> Eclipse Application" (or "Debug As -> Eclipse Application" to run in debug mode).

The next time you can just select "Eclipse Application" from the Run (or Debug) icon in the toolbar.