Eclipse integration

Revision as of 12:56, 7 November 2007

Developing modules within OpenCms leads to numerous errors and slower development as it lacks a good development ide. To edit schemas (xsd), templates (jsp) and everything else, that can be packed into a module, the Eclipse Development IDE is predestinated. Developing modules has be distinguished from content editing, which is the reason for using a cms.

For editing modules within the eclipse development ide currently two free plugins are available: the OpenCms Module Developer (Eclipse Public License v1.0) from Red Star Development and opencmsvfs (LGPL) from Laughing Panda. While the development of Opencms VFS is discontinued the OpenCms Module Developer is under development.

OpenCms Module Developer

The OpenCms Module Developer gives you access to the modules within your OpenCms-VFS. The plugin let you choose a module to edit, which is in turn loaded into the development-folder (real-file system!) of eclipse. Here the files can be created and edited.

Features

Current features of the OpenCms Module Developer (version 0.3) are:

• New Module wizard
• Support for OpenCms 6.0 through 7.0 (rc2 or newer)
• Support for special web container configurations, such as database drivers that are located in a shared lib folder
• Eclipse Library containing the OpenCms binaries is automatically added to your project's classpath
• Upload your module to OpenCms, overwriting existing files and removing obsolete files. OpenCms properties set on existing files are preserved
• Upload (as above) and publish your module to OpenCms
• Download your module from OpenCms, overwriting existing files and removing obsolete files

Requirements

• Eclipse 3.2 or newer
• OpenCms installation: OpenCms versions 6.0 through 7.0 (rc2 or newer) are supported

When communicating with OpenCms, about 22 MB of memory from Eclipse is used. Please adjust your memory settings of Eclipse as appropriate.

Installation

The OpenCms Module Developer is an eclipse-plugin. You can download the actual version from sourceforge. Drop the downloaded jar-file into the /plugins directory of Eclipse and (re)start Eclipse. After (re)start, first set the preferences on the OpenCms module Developer preferences pages in Eclipse (Window | preferences...). Redstar Development created a video tutorial that guides you through the preferences setup and usage.

Usage

Havbe a look at the video tutorial.

opencmsvfs (outdated)

Opencms Vfs development is discontinued. It officially supports Eclipse 3.2 and Opencms 6.x.x.

Opencms Vfs can map the vfs of opencms in Eclipse. ordinarily, if you want to create files (such as jsp xml) and edit them, you must go to opencms workplace, using editors of opencms, but the editors are not very efficient!

What is it?

OpenCms VFS is an Eclipse plugin used to access the OpenCms (http://www.opencms.org) virtual file system (VFS) from Eclipse. It is intended as a tool for OpenCms development, not content editing.

Features

   * Basic vfs operations (edit, copy, move, delete, publish, lock, unlock) except new file creation .

Releases

   * 0.0.3 (http://www.laughingpanda.org/~shonkone/opencmsvfs/releases/opencmsvfs-0.0.3.zip) (Change Log)
   * 0.0.2 (http://www.laughingpanda.org/~shonkone/opencmsvfs/releases/opencmsvfs-0.0.2.zip) (Change Log)
   * 0.0.1 (http://www.laughingpanda.org/~shonkone/opencmsvfs/releases/opencmsvfs-0.0.1.zip) (please read the Release Notes)

Installation

   * Download the distributed file
   * Unzip the file in your Eclipse directory
   * Start Eclipse
   * Edit the preferences (Window/Preferences.../OpenCms VFS Preferences)

o Note: The plugin will not work unless you set the preferences correctly

   * Start the view (Window/Show view/Other.../OpenCms/OpenCms VFS)

Upgrading

   * Delete file plugins/org.laughingpanda.opencmsvfs_x.x.x.jar
   * Unzip new version's package in eclipse -directory
   * Start eclipse with -clean option

Supported software versions

OpenCms

   * 6.2.1
   * 6.2.2

Eclipse

   * 3.2

License

Copyright (C) 2006 Sami Honkonen

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2.1 of the License, or any later version. Resources

Developers

   * Sami Honkonen (http://sami.honkonen.fi), project lead (when emailing me about issues concerning OpenCmsVFS, use my work email address)
   * Alexander Kandzior

Thanks to

   * Pekka Enberg
   * Joni Freeman

Version Control

   * Anonymous URL - http://svn.laughingpanda.com/svn/opencmsvfs-eclipse/trunk
   * Developer URL - https://svn.laughingpanda.com/svn/opencmsvfs-eclipse/trunk
   * Jira - http://www.laughingpanda.org/jira/browse/OPENCMSVFS