http://fjep.sourceforge.net/fjeptutorial.html

Happy jar building!

Möchte heute versuchen, erste Ansätze zum Code-Design von reticulum verfertigen, d.h.: einen ersten Entwurf eines Klassendiagramms zu erstellen. Da das SlimeUML Code->Diagramm, Diagramm->Code-Funktionalitäten nicht so drauf hat (und zusätzlich auch kein Sequenzdiagramm enthält), versuche ich mal ein anderes UML-Tool. Man hat ja in diesem Fall die Qual der Wahl (vgl.: http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/Web_Links-index-req-viewcatlink-cid-19.html ).

Habe mich für Topcased UML Editor entschieden (Bewertung, Screenshots, Beschreibung und Ermüdung waren die Entscheidungskriterien). Update-Site für direkte Eclipse-Plugin-Installation gibt es hier: http://topcased-mm.gforge.enseeiht.fr/release/update-site3.3/

Leider braucht man einen Haufen Dependencies, die man sich mühevoll aus der Plugin-Site Europa Discovery heraussuchen muss. Und der Download dauert ewiiig. La-la-la... Man stelle sich den Download mit einer 56K-Leitung vor (= immer positiv denken ^^).

Bis man da zum Diagramm-zeichnen kommt, hat man schon wieder vergessen, was man eigentlich zeichnen wollte. Da hofft wartender Student nur noch, dass das Tool zumindest brauchbar ist.

Die Vision

Während ich auf die Fertigstellung des Downloads warte, halte ich mein Big-Picture des Code-Designs kurz fest:

Man hat zunächst einmal die Klasse User als Superklasse der Klassen Gott, Herr und Sklave.

In der User-Klasse sind Basis-Attribute über die Identität des Benutzers, sein Registrierungsdatum, sein Nickname usw. gespeichert. Darüber hinaus verweist die Klasse User auf andere User-Klassen (man könnte dazu ein User-Array erstellen: User[] relatum; - sofern der Syntax stimmt ). Was hier leider noch nicht definiert ist, ist die Art der Beziehung. Man müste daher eine eigene Klasse Beziehung erstellen, die einerseits das Referenzobjekt (=Relatum) erstellt und andererseits die Art der Beziehung (ist Freund von, ist Arbeitskollege von, ist Angestellter von,... = Relator) festlegt. Diese Beziehung kommt anstelle der einfachen User-Referenz innerhalb der User-Klasse. Textuelle Beschreibungen sind einfach zu umständlich, um diese Dinge verständlich und schnell darzustellen - Gottseidank ist nun die Installation abgeschlossen.

Nur kurz noch zur Motivation: Durch die kurz skizzierten Klassen wird es möglich, dass einem beliebigerm User eine Menge von verschiedenartigen Kontakten (zu Göttern, Herren oder Sklaven) zugeordnet werden kann.

Mit dem Serialisierungskonzept von Java könnte es dann vielleicht möglich werden, dies alles persistent zu speichern (entweder in einer Datenbank oder als XML).

Einstieg in Klassendiagramme

Nachdem die Installation nun abgeschlossen ist, erstelle ich mit New Document / Topcased ein neues UML-Klassendiagramm: reticulum_iteration1.uml (siehe auch SVN-Code-Repository, dort wo auch generalclasses.cdx zu finden ist). Außerdem wechsle ich in die Perspektive Topcased-Modelling.

So - nun hab ich einmal ein paar Grundkonzepte erstellt. Nun stellt sich die Frage, wie man zu diesem Diagramm den entsprechenden Code generiert. Nach einiger Recherche in der Doku zeigt sich, dass anscheinend doch keine Code-Generierung möglich ist :( Man kann, wie ich das gezeigt habe, detaillierter als in SlimeUML Klassendiagramme erstellen, doch wie die Code-Generierung steht, wird mir heute wohl ein Rätsel bleiben. Bin zu müde, für weitere Recherchen.

Operation gelungen - Patient tot.

gn8
AKA

Microformats are integrated into an XHTML page through the 'class' attribute of an element. I won't go into the issues with doing this and while the additional information embedded into the page is welcome, it doesn't conform to the standardized integration model offered by XML. A good reference on integrating and pulling microformat information from a page is here.

Microformats are not easily retrieved from a page because there is no way to know ahead of time what formats are integrated into the page. A workaround in creating an XML structural summary based on microformats can be obtained by applying an extension of the XML element model to indexing attributes and furthermore their values (in order to identify differing attributes). Since the structural summaries being developed using AxPREs are based on XPath expressions, they will be able to handle microformats but with advanced planning on the user.

The screenshot below is of DescribeX with a P* summary of a collection of hCalendar files. Using Apache Lucene, the files are indexed to include regular text token, XML elements, XML attributes and their associatd values. On the right-hand side you can see a query has been entered searching using Lucene's default regex '*event*' to search for 'class' attributes that contain that term. The vertices in red represent the elements which contain it and while it would be nice to assume that the descendants of the highlighted vertices are related to hCalendar events, it is not the case.

http://www.javanuri.com/download/boardView.jsp?pg=8&menuId=28&Id=258168

Link to CASCON

• Search and Navigate code - search semantic properties of code (both source and bytecode), and define customized tree-views.
• Find bugs - use SemmleCode's standard library to detect common bugs; adjust existing code queries to search for bug patterns that are specific to your projects and frameworks.
• Compute metrics - do change impact analysis, spot bad code smells and explore dependencies, all with the library of metrics queries.
• Enforce coding conventions - introduce your own checks with intuitive custom queries; show violations as errors or warnings in Eclipse.
• Generate charts and graphs - view analysis results in no less than seven different ways, including charts and graphs; navigation is further simplified as each view is linked back to the source code.

You can read more here. I really hope to have the time to try it out.

All  these plugins are for software metrics which will help in code quality.

Checkstyle is a plugin which I have used and found useful. We can
give a xml file based rule (coding std) to the plugin and while writing
code it will highlight the checkstyle errors. This avoided a lot of headaches
when compared to times the code went into the automated build process
and then all your checkstyle errors were highlighted before the world.

JDepend4Eclipse - traverses Java class file directories and generates design metrics for each Java package.

Coverlipse - djunit is another plugin which does the same job of showing your unit test coverage.

PMD - Helps with code duplication.

Metrics - Measures complexity.

The video pod cast I was talking about before

An article and tutorial about the five plugins by ibm developer works :- Automation for the people by Paul Duvall

To download the free plugins use the links below.

http://pmd.sourceforge.net/eclipse/

http://andrei.gmxhome.de/jdepend4eclipse/index.html 

http://coverlipse.sourceforge.net/index.php

http://metrics.sourceforge.net/

http://eclipse-cs.sourceforge.net/ 

BTW, there is a new Eclipse plugin for Google Gears is already in the drawing board. Not publicly available and sent only thru invitations. If you are interested in trying out, please send a mail to prakash at cypal dot in.

Eclipse GEF-based Editor Plug-in Creation

1. right-click on the project representing the library and in the context menu proceed to "PDE-Tools" and select "Convert Project to Plug-in Projects...

It's that easy. The plugin is automatically exported when running/debugging an Eclipse instance during plug-in development.

If your library itself relies on jar files, those will have to be included in the manifest file.This will also give you access to some of the features you allow to be exposed to other plug-ins dependent on your library plug-in. In the manifest file:

- in the runtime tab, add the external jar files to your plug-in classpath

- in the runtime tab, select the packages that you would like other plug-ins to have access to, preferrably your library packages at the minimum and optionally the external library packages that your library itself uses.

- in the overview tab you can rename your plug-in and apply versioning

Once the plug-in is configured as desired, simply include this plug-in in the dependency tab of the other plug-in's manifest file and you'll have access to your library plug-ins exported packages.

Next steps are: index selection (local/network), specifying xpath expressions, specifying field to search

I've created a screencast of VisTopK in action using the great application Wink, originally referenced from Greg's blog entry, but Wordpress doesn't allow Flash (SWF) uploads. Anyone have any ideas on how/where I can post it? I tried converting it to an AVI to maybe post it to YouTube but the size of 1GB stopped that attempt cold.

Now it's a matter of deciding to take TReX's existing No-Random-Access threshold algorithm code or just roll my own. Reasons to stay away from the existing code are: tight integration with TReX's data structures, lack of parameters for its use, and a bad code smell. If I roll my own, then it's to decide whether I should integrate it into Lucene or keep it as a simple external algorithm engine. An ambitious Lucene contrib vision possibly? I've never contributed to open source but am truly inspired by the dedication required as described in Karl Fogel's (FREE) ebook Producing Open Source Software. Starting from scratch will also allow for a nicer class hierarchy to take advantage of some interesting concepts mentioned in the IO-Top-k paper, concepts such as propabilistic inference or skew detection to terminate the algorithm even sooner.

Once that's done I'll have a prototype for XML document collection indexing and retrieval using a threshold algorithm for top-k query processing.
Some related tools that seem interesting are: Luke, a Lucene index-modification/viewing tool, very nice looking and feature filled. Lius, which I haven't tried and seems to do the same thing as Luke.

Lately I have been very busy (speaking at JavaZone and JAOO) and I haven't been able to do much about it. Still, on this project we were two developers, so before doing anything I will have to discuss these details and see what are the options. However, I promise I will keep everybody interested posted.

However, tonight, working on some very long sources I have remembered it and I said I should give it a new try. Unfortunately, once I enabled it no editors could been displayed. Checking the .log file I have found the reason: the folding code was broken with a NoSuchMethod exception.

I have found in my archives the last version of the plugin and I thought I should check the API. To my surprise the API was still available (or at least reachable), but what made me post this entry is a feature added in Eclise 3.1: Access Restrictions, according to which when you create a plugin you can restrict others plugin access to its code. While I find the idea quite good (as it makes the API more clear), I have found out that almost everything related to java source code editors is restricted, and I am wondering why? I thought some other plugins would benefit from a clear API (for example AJDT), and now finding this makes me wonder about the reasons (I am quite sure there are good reasons).

However, getting back to the points of this entry, you can read more about Access restrictions: here.

Following the last advise specified at the above link:

But what if you really, really, really, really need to use the class? In that case, you can use it, but you need to be aware of what it means (four really's usually does it for me).

I have done some small changes to readapt the code and now I have again Coffee-Bytes code folding working on Eclipse 3.2. Just look at the picture to see how reach it is compaired with the default code folding offered by Eclipse:

It offers you folding for:

• top level types
• normal methods
• constructors
• getters and setters
• main methods
• inner types
• static initializers
• import statements
• source headers
• comment blocks
• javadocs

and even User defined code folding:

<UsedPathMacros>
<macro name="MAVEN_REPO" />
</UsedPathMacros>

you will force your project to define this variable and than you can use it in both module paths and different classpaths just by specifying $MAVEN_REPO$/rest_of_path. The only thing left is to find out how you can do this without having to manually edit the .ipr and .iml files. Does anybody know the answer to this?

Disclaimer: this is the 3rd post in row about Idea and considering what may happen if Hani is picking you, I will just let everybody know that I am not associated and nor do I work for Eclipse or Idea.

category: Eclipse, IDEA, IDE

Today the Eclipse user (n.b.: me) had to play with paths. And I am including here: source paths, output paths and classpaths.
First: source paths. In Eclipse I have to define the source folders under the current project directory. The only possibility to include in a project external source dirs is through linked directories. Idea allows providing more Content Roots for each module, and so you can include multiple source directories from different locations on the file system.
Output paths: Idea allows you to set only 2 output directories per module: the source output directory and the test output directory. Even if at the first glance this looks a little bit restrictive, things are not so bad cause for real big projects requiring multiple output folders you will however have to define a build system (Ant, Maven based) to really manage the project.
So far, everything went as expected. Unfortunately, the things weren't as clear while trying to set the classpath. In a multi-module project, Idea introduces 3 types of classpaths: Global libraries, Project libraries and Module libraries. While at the first glance these look really good, I finally haven't been able to achieve what I wanted.

And I think this is the moment for the first question: considering a project that is shared by a team of developers, and the project is built using jars from a MAVEN local repository (each developer may have the repository on a different location), how should I define the classpath so that the project/module definition can be shared? Or, what is the correct approach for achieving this with Idea. In Eclipse I am doing this using a variable pointing to MAVEN_REPO and than defining the classpath in terms of this variable (the classpath will look something like: MAVEN_REPO/log4j/jars/log4j-1.2.8.jar;MAVEN_REPO/lucene/jars/lucene-1.4.3.jar. Considering that each developer can define this variable to point to his repository than the team will be able to share the project definition file). Can this be achieved with Idea?

In Eclipse I can include a jar in my project classpath using one of the following solutions:

• contained in the current project (the most usual way)
• anywhere on the filesystem (not very usefully in a shared project)
• extended variable (as shown above)
• relative to another project (very usefully in a shared project: the classpath description is persisted in relative terms ignoring the real locations of the projects)

My final question for the 2nd day in the Idea-land would be: how can I achieve the 3rd and 4th scenarios in the above list, and also be assured that the project/module definition can be shared. I really hope to have some answers from expert Idea users, so that I will have a 3rd day in Idea-land. Thanks.

category: Eclipse, IDEA, IDE

Since back in the days of Netbeans 3, I got used to define in my workspace projects that are related to my current work. For example, if my current work project is using WebWork than usually I will create a WebWork project. This will allow me to navigate through its sourcecode and also help me when debugging.

IntelliJ IDEA allows you to work with a project at a time. But it allows you to define more modules inside a project and as I found out groups of modules. And here is my first question:

Can I use modules to refere the external projects my current project is based on? Or in case this is a wrong approach from the perspective of IDEA than what is the way to define my project so that I can navigate the source code of the projects it depends on?

I will be very happy to hear how I can do this in the IDEA-way. Thanks in advance to everyone giving me hints.

Disclaimer: I have spent some time reading the IDEA help, but I haven't found references to this question. The approach I am describing above it's coming mainly from using the Eclipse workspace export plugin provided with IDEA.

Update: Scott posted the hint to succesfully see the dependency projects while debugging.

category: Eclipse, IDEA, IDE

Disclaimer: this post is by no means meant to upset IntelliJ IDEA's developers. It is only my short experience while trying to develop a plugin.

• TestNG official site
• TestNG-Eclipse on dev.java.net
• or directly accessed from the CVS (release directory)

Now the official announcement:

Hi all!
The TestNG team is pleased to announce (and distribute also ;-)) the first version of TestNG Eclipse plugin.

Features
========
1/ TestNG View (Window -> Show View -> Other -> Java -> TestNG) featuring
- the Red-Green Bar
- test results statistics
- hierarchical test results presentation
- failures stack traces presentation.

2/ TestNG Launcher (Run ... -> TestNG) featuring
- browse and run a TestNG enabled test class
- browse and run groups defined in the project tests
- browse and run suites

3/ Contextual TestNG Launcher (Right Click -> Run) featuring:
- run class as TestNG test
- run type as TestNG test
- run method as TestNG test
- run suite as TestNG test

The current version is working with Eclipse 3.1M5 (and probably 3.1M4).

Your feedback is welcome (and needed). Enjoy!

--
TestNG Team

You can see a set of nice snapshots on Cedric's announcement.

We hope that this release will bring more pleasure on your experience with TestNG.

I would like to find out what I was doing wrong and how I can do the following:

• make WinCVS work with ext or extssh protocol (probably using plink)
• make Eclipse extssh connection work (so not using plink)

A very nice solution for CVS is also TortoiseCVS (thanks Alex for the suggestion. It works nice with pageant).

Update: Euxx has posted more hints on Eclipse and CVS usage.