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JBoss.comEnterprise Documentation

Chapter 1. Getting Started with JBoss Developer Studio

1.1. What is JBDS?
1.2. Key Features of JBoss Developer Studio
1.3. Configuring Your Java Environment
1.3.1. Installing and Configuring 32-bit Sun JDK 5.0 on Linux
1.3.2. Installing and Configuring 32-bit Sun JDK 5.0 on Microsoft Windows
1.4. JBoss Developer Studio Installation
1.5. JBoss Developer Studio and JBoss Tools
1.5.1. What is the difference?
1.5.2. JBoss Tools Installation
1.6. Welcome to JBoss Developer Studio
1.7. Upgrading
1.8. Uninstalling
1.9. Support
1.10. Other relevant resources on the topic

JBoss Developer Studio is a set of eclipse-based development tools that are pre-configured for JBoss Enterprise Middleware Platforms and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Developers are not required to use JBoss Developer Studio to develop on JBoss Enterprise Middleware and/or Red Hat Linux. But, many find these pre-configured tools offer significant time-savings and value, making them more productive and speeding time to deployment.

This guide covers the first steps to get started working with JBoss Developer Studio. You will learn how to install and configure necessary software for your OS (currently Linux, Microsoft Windows or Mac OSX).

Thus this guide will provide you with detailed info on how to start JDK, JBDS and JBoss Tools.

For a start, we propose you to look through the table of main features of JBoss Developer Studio

Table 1.1. Key Functionality of JBoss Developer Studio

FeatureBenefit 

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform

JBoss Developer Studio includes and integrates JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, the same version of the middleware platform that Red Hat supports in production for 5 years.

 

New Seam Tools

JBoss Developer Studio includes brand new tools for Seam. They provide wizards for creating new Seam projects, validation tools, expression language code completion, testing tools, and wizards for generating entity objects.

 

Visual Page Editor

JBoss Developer Studio includes a Visual Page Editor for combined visual and source editing of Web pages. The Visual Page Editor even renders AJAX-enabled RichFaces components.

 

AJAX Capabilities

JBoss Developer Studio includes a Technology Preview of JBoss RichFaces. RichFaces provides nearly 70 skinnable components, including calendar, tree, dropdown menu, drag-and-drop components, and more. JBoss Developer Studio’s Visual Page Editor can render RichFaces components.

 

JBoss Tools Palette

The JBoss Tools Palette contains a developer’s project tag libraries and enables inserting tags into a JSP with one click. The Tools Palette supports custom and 3rd party tags.

 

JBoss jBPM Tools

JBoss Developer Studio includes jBPM tooling for defining Seam page flows.

 

Spring Tools

JBoss Developer Studio includes Spring IDE for developing Spring applications.

 

Struts Tools

JBoss Developer Studio includes Struts tools for Struts 1.x applications.

 

Optimized JBoss Application Server adapter

JBoss Developer Studio’s advanced JBoss AS adapter includes features like incremental deployment for fast development and is pre-configured for the included JBoss Application server.

 

Red Hat Enterprise Linux and RHN Access

JBoss Developer Studio includes access to Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Linux development tools, and Red Hat Network for development purposes.

 

Business Intelligence Report Tool (BIRT)

JBoss Developer Studio includes Business Intelligence Report Tool, a reporting system that integrates with Java/J2EE, extracts certain information, analyzes it, and generates report summaries and charts.

 

JBossWeb Service

JBoss WS is a web service framework developed as a part of the JBoss Application Server. It implements the JAX-WS specification that defines a programming model and run-time architecture for implementing web services in Java, targeted at the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5 (Java EE 5).

 

You must have a working installation of JDK 5 before you install JBoss Developer Studio. Currently it will only fully work with a 32-bit JVM, not a 64-bit JVM. On a 64-bit JVM the visual editor fails to launch because of feature of OS architecture. Thus in this guide we will show you how to install a 32-bit Sun JDK 5.0 on a Linux Platform and Microsoft Windows Platform.

To install 32-bit Sun JDK 5.0 on Linux and configure it, you should follow the next steps:

  • Download the Sun JDK 5.0 (Java 2 Development Kit) from Sun's website. Choose "JDK 5.0 Update <x>" (where "x" is the latest update number) for download and then select "Red Hat Package Manager in self-extracting" file for Linux. Read the instructions on Sun's website for installing the JDK.

  • If you don't want to use SysV service scripts you can install the "self-extracting file" for Linux instead of choosing the "RPM in self-extracting" file. In that case you can skip the next step mentioned here. But it is recommended to use the SysV service scripts for production servers.

  • Download and install the appropriate -compat RPM from JPackage here. Please ensure you choose a matching version of the -compat package to the JDK you've installed.

  • Create an environment variable that points to the JDK installation directory and call it JAVA_HOME. Add $JAVA_HOME/bin to the system path to be able to run java from the command line. You can do this by adding the following lines to the .bashrc file in your home directory.

    #In this example /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_11 is the JDK installation directory.
    export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.5.0_11
    export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin

Note:

If you have JDK already installed and added in your system path, you should add $JAVA_HOME/bin before the old $PATH (not after it) so that the new version of JDK can be found first, i. e. export PATH=$JAVA_HOME/bin:$PATH This way, the machine will pick up the new JVM first. You only need to run "alternative" as a safe guard for the right JVM.

Set this variable for your account doing the installation and also for the user account that will run the server.

  • If you have more than one version of JVM installed on your machine, make sure you are using the JDK 1.5 installation as the default java and javac. You can do this using the alternatives system. The alternatives system allows different versions of Java from different sources to co-exist on your system.

[root@vsr ~]$ /usr/sbin/alternatives --config java
There are 2 programs that provide 'java'.
Selection    Command
-----------------------------------------------
   1           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.4.2-gcj/bin/java
*+ 2           /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.5.0-sun/bin/java
Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number:

Make sure the Sun version [jre-1.5.0-sun in this case] is selected (marked with a '+' in the output), or select it by entering its number as prompted.

[root@vsr ~]$ /usr/sbin/alternatives --config javac
There is 1 program that provides 'javac'.
	Selection   Command
-----------------------------------------------
*+ 1           /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/bin/javac
Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number:

[root@vsr ~]$ /usr/sbin/alternatives --config java_sdk_1.5.0
There is 1 program that provide 'java_sdk_1.5.0'.
	Selection   Command
-----------------------------------------------
*+ 1           /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun
Enter to keep the current selection[+], or type selection number:

You should verify that java, javac and java_sdk_1.5.0 all point to the same manufacturer and version.

[root@vsr ~]$ java -version
java version "1.5.0_11"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.5.0_11-b03)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.5.0_11-b03, mixed mode, sharing)

To install and configure 32-bit Sun JDK 5.0 on Microsoft Windows, follow these steps:

  • Download the Sun JDK 5.0 (Java 2 Development Kit) from Sun's website. Choose "JDK 5.0 Update <x>" (where "x" is the latest update number) for download and then select your Windows Platform options to perform the installation.

  • Create an environment variable called JAVA_HOME that points to the JDK installation directory, for example:


           C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_11\
          

In order to run java from the command line, add the jre\bin directory to your path, for example:

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0_11\jre\bin

To do this, open the Control Panel from the Start menu, switch to Classic View if necessary, open the System Control Panel applet ( System ), select the Advanced Tab, and click on the Environment Variables button.

Now, when 32-bit Sun JDK 5.0 has been successfully installed, we can pass on to the next step.

This chapter will provide you with detailed information on how to install JBoss Developer Studio.

JBDS comes with a simple installer, bundled with tested/pre-configured versions of Eclipse, WTP, JBossEAP, Seam, and SpringIDE. Thus, to start perform the next steps:


  • Provide the installation path

  • Select Java VM


Tip:

By selecting Default Java VM you set default Java VM of your system (to verify your Java environment, type "java -version" in console).

Selecting Specific Java VM you can provide the path to non-default Java VM.

Note:

JBoss Developer Studio needs Java 5 and "gij" isn't available on every platform.


  • You can fill the list automatically using the Find button: click Find, select a folder where search of available JBoss Application Servers should be started and click on Ok:


  • All available servers in the selected directory will be added to the list with the following information specified: Name, Type, Version and Location.


  • You can also add servers one by one using the Add button:


Click on Browse and select the server location. Fields Name, Type and Version will be filled in automatically:


Click on Ok. The server is added to the list with the details on its type, version and location.

The Remove button will the remove the selected server from the list. If necessary, you can edit the server details clicking on the Edit button:


  • Click Next. Check your installation paths and see the components to install. If you'd like to change something, press the Previous button. Click Next to start installation.


This section uncovers the points on the differences between JBoss Developer Studio and JBoss Tools and provides the steps on JBoss Tools installation as well.

Here, let's consider the installation of the JBoss Tools modules.

JBoss Tools is an umbrella project for the JBoss developed plugins that will make it into JBoss Developer Studio. The JBoss Tools modules are:

To install the JBoss Tools plugins for Eclipse, you need the following:

The current version of JBoss Tools (3.0.1.GA) targets at Eclipse 3.4.2 and WTP 3.0.4

If you can only use Eclipse 3.3 use JBoss Tools 2.1.2, but JBoss Tools 2.x will not have any of the new features.

Note:

Remember to choose the download that matches your OS and use Java 5 when you run it.

Some of our newer plugins, like TPTP and BIRT, need additional drivers. On the left side of the download page you can find all of the required drivers for chosen build and their versions.

Instead of downloading the nightly build version manually, it's also possible to get the latest release of JBoss Tools from one of our update sites:

  • Finally, install the build

Unzip the file(s) directly into your Eclipse plugins/features directory and it will be readily available. It might be necessary to start Eclipse with eclipse -clean to make sure it starts clean and rereads the new list of plugins.

If you need to install any standalone plug-in from JBoss Tools visit a JBoss Tools Wiki page to read about dependencies between standalone plug-ins.

In this section we'll show you how to work with the welcome page of the JBoss Developer Studio.

The welcome page is the first page you see when you first launch JBoss Developer Studio.


With the help of its page you will be able:

  • to get quick access to Getting Started Documentation (guides, tutorials and viewlets)


  • to create new Seam projects, jBPM Process, JSF or Struts projects using JBDS wizards


  • to get short description of perspectives that JBDS offers for more productive development


  • to visit JBoss Developer Studio web resources.


Start work with JBoss Developer Studio by clicking on Workbench button or simply close the Welcome page.

To upgrade, just uninstall your current version and install the new one.

If you have comments or questions, you can discuss them at our JBoss Developer Studio Forum.

When writing to the forum for questions, please include the following information:

  1. JBoss Developer Studio version

  2. Exact error message

  3. Steps to reproduce the issue

JBDS subscribers can get necessary support on our Support Portal.

JBDS on JBoss: JBoss Developer Studio

Forum: JBoss Forum

Subscription: JBDS Subscription

The latest documentation builds are available here.