How To Set-Up a Project

To begin with, you'll need to decide which type of project to create. The three different types are 'extension', 'feature' and 'component.' The majority of projects will be the latter. If you're unsure as to which type of project to create, please see the user guide for a discussion regarding component deployments and extension deployments. To create a project 'archetype' of the desired type, follow the steps below:

1. First download and install the latest version of alakai and set the ALAKAI_HOME environment variable to point to the root of your installation. This is necessary for two reasons. Firstly, the integration tests defined within each project require a system implementation in order to execute. Secondly, the 'provided' classpath, as defined by the project's pom, uses ALAKAI_HOME to locate the specification-eoa-api artifact. For more information regarding dependency types please see the following section within the user guide.

2. Now download and install the latest version of Maven. If you're not familiar with maven, the following reference is a good place to start. Note that within the steps that follow, we'll execute a custom archetype plugin - not the maven archetype plugin which is mentioned within the referenced guide.

3. Next, register the EOA plugin prefix by adding the following snippet to the 'conf/settings.xml' file located within your maven installation.

<pluginGroups>
  <pluginGroup>org.bluestemsoftware.open.maven.plugin</pluginGroup>
</pluginGroups>

4. Change to the parent directory within which you wish to create the project and run 'mvn eoa:archetype -Dtype=component' where the type property is set to one of 'extension', 'feature' or 'component.' If you created a component project archetype, it will have the following structure. The other archetype types will differ slightly.

5. You'll probably want to change the name of your project to something other than the default generated name, e.g. 'my-application'. To do this, change the name of the generated directory and then modify the content of the 'artifactId' and 'name' elements located within the project's pom.xml (which is located in the root of the generated directory.) You should also set the 'groupId' element to your organization's id.

6. To configure your project for the eclipse IDE (support for other IDE's will be developed eventually,) from within the root of your project directory run 'mvn eoa:eclipse'. You can now import the project into eclipse: -> File -> Import -> Existing Projects into Workspace.

That's it. Now depending upon the type of project generated, you'll want to consult one of the following 'how to's', e.g. how to develop an application, how to develop an extension or how to develop a feature each of which also includes instructions on how to test your EOA projects.