IDE Plugins for AribaWeb

This project defines a plug in for the Eclipse and IntelliJ IDEA development environments (IDEs).

FEATURES

The plugin adds three features to IDEA and Eclipse:

Code to/from Template toggle (Alt-A / Ctrl-Alt-A)

By convention, in AribaWeb the code (.java or .groovy) and template (.awl or .htm) files sit together in the source directory and have the same name (but different file extensions). The Alt-A command will toggle from viewing the code to template, or visa-versa. You'd be surprised about just how handy this is in practice.

Tag to Definition Jump (Alt-B, Ctrl-Alt-B)

When viewing a .awl file, if your cursor sits in an AW tag (e.g. <TextButton>) and you press Alt-B you will be jumped to the .awl file that defines that tag.

Note: This feature is presently not working correctly for tags with namespace prefixes (e.g. <w:TextButton>). This will be remedied in a future release.

App to Source File Navigation

This one is pretty cool: there are various contexts in which (when in development mode) your running AW app may display file names from your source code in the web page (e.g. in an exception backtrace, in Component Inspector, or in the SearchSource app). In these cases, when then name is displayed as a hyperlink, clicking it will open the file in your IDE (and navigate to the correct line number)!

INSTALLING

To use the plug in within your IDE you must first install the appropriate .jar file in your IDE's plug in directory. These plugins can be found in your AribaWeb install root:

ide/
    ariba.ideplugin.eclipse.5.0rc1.jar
    aribawebIdeaPlugin.jar

Copy the appropriate one for your IDE into its plugins directory (e.g. eclipse/plugins) and restart your IDE.

IDEA: The IDEA plug-in can be downloaded via the IntelliJ Preferences->Plugins -> Available panel (search for AribaWeb).

GETTING STARTED: IDEA

See the webcast, AribaWeb: Setting up IntelliJ IDEA for AW Development.

Important:

• The first time you open a new AW project in IDEA you will be propted to enter your "AW_HOME" path variable. After setting this variable to point at the install location for AribaWeb, restart IDEA (there appears to be a bug where this parameter change does not properly take effect until after a clear restart)

• You need to update your Ant Home to Ant 1.7.1. IDEA 7.0.x comes bundled with Ant 1.7.0. AW build files require 1.7.1, so you need to update your Ant_Home to 1.7.1. In the Ant panel Properties panel, under the "Execution" panel, select "Use custom ant", click the "..." file selector button, and select the copy of Ant 1.7.1 bundled in AW_HOME/tools/ant.

GETTING STARTED: ECLIPSE

The plugin automatically aids in the setup of your Eclipse workspace for AW development.

• Upon the first restart after installing the plugin, Eclipse will prompt you for your AW_HOME. Select the directory where you unzipped the AribaWeb distribution.

• Based on your AW_HOME, the plug in will:

  1. Change your Ant Home to point at the 1.7.1 version included with AribaWeb
  2. Set the Ant variable ${aw.home} to point at your AW_HOME
  3. Set up a "User Library" with all of the AW distribution jars (for use in the classpath of your AW projects).

BUILDING

To rebuild the plugin from source, you will need to point the Ant build at the location of your IDE's lib directory containing the integration jars.

For IDEA, look for a directory that includes the following:

• openapi.jar
• extensions.jar

(these can likely be found inside IDEA's application directory).

Invoke the ant build as follows:

ant -Didea.lib.dir=/Applications/IntelliJIdea.app/lib

(Assuming that your IDEA is installed in /Applications/IntelliJIdea.app).

For Eclipse, look for a directory that includes something like the following:

• org.eclipse.core.commands_3.2.0.I20060605-1400.jar
• org.eclipse.core.jobs_3.2.0.v20060603.jar
• org.eclipse.core.resources3.2.1.R32xv20060914.jar
• org.eclipse.core.runtime_3.2.0.v20060603.jar
• org.eclipse.equinox.common_3.2.0.v20060603.jar
• org.eclipse.equinox.registry3.2.1.R32xv20060814.jar
• org.eclipse.jface_3.2.1.M20060908-1000.jar
• org.eclipse.osgi3.2.1.R32xv20060919.jar
• org.eclipse.swt.win32.win32.x86_3.2.1.v3235.jar
• org.eclipse.text_3.2.0.v20060605-1400.jar
• org.eclipse.ui.ide_3.2.1.M20060915-1030.jar
• org.eclipse.ui.workbench.texteditor_3.2.0.v20060605-1400.jar
• org.eclipse.ui.workbench_3.2.1.M20060906-0800.jar

Invoke your ant build as follows:

ant -Declipse.lib.dir=/Applications/eclipse/plugins

If you see out of memory exception, pass the following arguments to increase the heap size:

-vmargs -Xms512m -Xmx512m