Setting up

This section describes how to set up Eclipse and Odysseus for development.

1. Prerequisites

You will need the following tools:

2. Checkout Source Code

There are different ways to create new functionality with Odysseus. The first way should be used if you want to add something new to Odysseus (e.g. a new wrapper) but do not want to change the common code base. This should be the preferred way of development with Odysseus:

Option 1: Extending Odysseus with New Plugins

Odysseus has a very large code base. To allow a lightweight start, we provide a template project in our Bitbucket server. You should clone or fork this project and use it to add new plugins to this template. The template can be found here: https://git.swl.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/projects/ODY/repos/odysseusrepotemplate/browse . When using git you should use the following command to clone Odysseus. The template contains some standard products and the target platform as a submodule. The "--recurse-submodules" flag clones this submodule when cloning the repository. Alternatively, you can clone the submodule individually.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://git.swl.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/scm/ody/odysseusrepotemplate.git
cd odysseus_dev
git checkout master

Remark: because you are not allowed to push updates to the template repository you should change your repository URL to your git location and rename your folder to your new repository name.

git remote set-url origin <new url>

Option 2: Extending an Existing Odysseus Plugin

You want to extend an existing plugin from Odysseus? Then, instead of cloning the empty template from Option 1, clone the repository of the plugin you want to develop on. If the plugin is hosted in our Bitbucket, you can probably find it in one of the projects in this list: https://git.swl.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de/projects . Look for example at the Odysseus, the Odysseus Incubation and Odysseus Wrapper projects. When you have found the repository you want to use, check it out and don't forget to clone the submodule to get the target platform definition and the standard products:

git clone --recurse-submodules <your repo URL>
cd odysseus_dev
git checkout master

Remark: There could be some updates in odysseus_dev that is not already reflected in each module. So it is always a good idea to update the odysseus_dev submodule to the newest version.

3. Setup Eclipse

After Eclipse started, you have to import all bundles (these are the parts of Odysseus and are equal to an Eclipse project). Use "File -> Import -> Existing Projects into Workspace" to import them into Eclipse as follows:


After clicking "Next", select all needed projects.The source code folder has the following subfolders:

Furthermore, each main folder has different subfolders. Each subfolder normally contains a certain functionality or a dedicated extension (aka plugin for Odysseus).

In the follwing screenshot some bundles are selected.


We recommend to create working sets like here to group certain bundles:

For Odysseus core development: We recommend to use a dedicated Eclipse workspace for Odysseus, because a full import of Odysseus may have more than 300 projects. The most simple way is as follows. If you are starting Eclipse for the first time, choose the folder where you checked out the source code as the workspace location. If you already have a workspace, you can switch it via "File -> Switch Workspace -> Other...".

4. Target Platform

You probably only checked out the bundles you need, not the whole Odysseus core, resources and other stuff. All these things are part of the target platform and are loaded when setting the target platform for your workspace. Before you do that, you probably see a lot of compiler errors. After you set the target platform, the errors should be gone. This definition is provided via the "target-platform.target" file (hint: if you don't see the target platform as a project when importing, go back to the git checkout project and make sure you cloned the submodule).

If you are using the project template, the target platform can be found in the project targetplatform. If you are making core odysseus development (which is unlikely), it  can be found in the bundle/project called "de.uniol.inf.is.odysseus.common.feature". Open this file and click "Set as target platform" to use this as your target platform. This can take a while. When you click on the small green progress-bar icon in Eclipse you can see the progress.

You can also use CRTL-SHIFT-R to search for the target platform

Notice, the target platform is valid for your whole workspace (therefore we recommend to use a dedicated workspace for Odysseus development).  Remark: Sometimes eclipse behaves strange when setting a new target platform. See Odysseus FAQ for further hints if there are problems with the target platform.

5. First Run - Available Products

Now you should be able to run Odysseus. There are some predefined product-definitions to run Odysseus. Depending on the bundles/folders you checked out before they can differ, but the standard submodule should contain three products:

For your first run, the easiest way is to start the "Odysseus Studio 2 (Monolithic).product". Open this file and go to the tab "Overview". Click "Synchronize" under "Testing" and afterwards click "Launch an Eclipse application" to run Odysseus (you can alternatively run it in debug mode if you want). When Odysseus Studio (the GUI) comes up, you have to insert some credentials. A default user is "System" and the password is "manager", the tenant can be left empty. Now Odysseus should be up and running.

6. Additional Information

Features

Since Odysseus is an OSGi based application, it is divided into several bundles (the bunch of projects you checked out and imported before). To keep the overview of all bundles, they are combined to features. Each feature reflects a special functionality of Odysseus. Thus, we have a core.feature that encapsulates all minimal needed bundles or the studio.feature that contains all bundles for the RCP (i.e., GUI) of Odysseus (what we call Odysseus Studio). The combination of several features is called a "product" - which should be runnable. The section above, for example, lists three products that combine different sets of features.

The core feature is necessary because it contains all fundamental functions for Odysseus. Here's a list of Odysseus Features: Features. See Adding features to products how to add a new Feature to an existing product.

Logging

Odysseus comes with the Simple Logging Facade for Java (SLF4J). To use logging, add the de.uniol.inf.is.odysseus.slf4j bundle. In this bundle you can find the log4j.properties to configure the logging behavior.

MacOS

Currently, only the server is working on MacOS. You can start the Odysseus Server product from Eclipse, but you cannot start any GUI product (e.g. Monolithic) that involves RCP. To run the server product, you have to install Java JDK 1.8, e.g. with homebrew: https://www.lonecpluspluscoder.com/2017/10/08/installing-other-versions-of-the-java-jdk-via-homebrew/