Re: Keel Newbie, Eclipse 3.0M8

Doris,

Welcome aboard!

> Since you guys want to know what problems Newbies are having, I'll 
> try to explain some of them (at the risk of embarassing myself - 
> which is probably why you don't get much feedback in this department).
> 

We are humans here, unlike the Gods, or at least super-humans, at many other
projects. If you only knew what embarassment I go through on a daily basis :-)
 As the saying goes, "the only stupid question is the one that is not asked",
so keep asking and providing "stupid" feedback.

> ECLIPSE
> I'm working with Eclipse 3.0M8/JDK 1.4 and had some issues setting 
> up Keel. First I tried to download the latest from Head and picked 
> "all". Without any additional settings, Eclipse put each package in 
> a seperate project, not creating a project "keel" at all. I created 
> the project "keel" and explicitly downloaded each package into that 
> project (check out as - checkout into an existing project). 

Then it worked like a charm :-).  That is how it is meant to be.  There is no
overall "keel" project, Keel is meant to be a collection of apps and services.
The modules are not all necessary, all the time, for all users; hence the
seperation.  As part of the overall doc. update, I'll put an explanation in
the Eclipse notes.  Mike is working on updating the build procedures where you
will be able to use Keel as a library, where you will need a "project" to
build Keel with, more instructions will follow when that is done. 

> "Checkout as" is not an option for "all". Propably could have moved 
> them , too. I could not see the packages in the Java perspective,
>  only in resource. I figuree out that I had to create a source 
> folder, in this case src/java, for the Java perspective to work. So 
> then I proceeded to "ant completeinstall", trying to run it out of Eclipse.
> I kept getting an error indicating that it couldn't read the console 
> input
> ("default").

This is an Eclipse-M7-and-on bug, used to work before, but not anymore.  In
any case, using Ant inside Eclipse is nice from an integrated IDE point of
view, but we don't use it since it is much slower than simply running Ant
outside Eclipse.  Just open a shell (or an DOS COommand Window on Windows,
better yet, use Cygwin), and use Ant directly.

>I googled "Ant Input Eclipse" and various other 
> combinations, looking at various sources, not finding an answer. Did 
> not really want change any of the Ant scripts. I had a running Keel 
> installation from a couple of months ago that worked (had run "ant 
> completeinstall" from DOS). So I created a new keel project in 
> Eclipse (to generate .classpath and .project), added the working 
> Keel and the Sysdeo Tomcat plugin. I pointed the plugin to the 
> Tomcat root in keel-build. I was able to launch Tomcat and 
> http://localhost:8080/struts/model.do?model=test worked. Now I can update
> with the latest from Head....

Again, no need to create any .classpath/.project, Keel supplies a pair with
every module in CVS (that's why you actually saw each one of those many
projects in Eclipse).  For your own apps/services, cd to keel-build, and run
"ant -f build-module.xml" and it will tell you what options you can choose;
this will create a complete directory structure, including
.classpath/.project.  Since you are using Eclipse, you can also use the
Eclipse plugin for blank apps, but it was created for Keel-2.0, you need to
create some dirs manually to get it working with Keel-2.1.
> 
> WHAT WOULD HELP
> I mostly followed
> http://keelframework.org/documentation/eclipseTutorial.html, even though
> it's based on Eclipse 2.x. Most of the screen shots apply or can be adapted.
> It would help to include some information regarding the first build,
> mentioning the Sysdeo Tomcat plugin would be a nice touch. Having to 
> create the src folder is Eclipse specific but might not be known to 
> somebody new to Eclipse. Not sure if the download "all" can be 
> changed, but putting the info out would help.
>
I will update the docs to better explain this right in the Eclipse HOWTO
(right now it points to the tutorial on Wiki, which tells you how to run ant).
 
> MOZILLA FIREFOX 0.8/WIKI SEARCH
> The result is displayed as HTML code. I posted this with Firefox, their
> answer:
> 
> >The page is actually sent as text/plain.
> >Firefox does what it is told and renders it text/plain.
> >IE makes a guess based on content and ignores the MIME-type.
> >A letter to the webmaster/webmistress letting them know there
> >is a problem might help.
> >I'll look for a link.
> 
This is an artifact of the Wiki rev. we are running, unless someone grants
access to the host box none of the volunteers can upgrade this.  This problem
won't go away for a while....sorry!  

> SWING/SWT CROSSOVER
> Is there any additional information available regarding this client?
> 
> DOCUMENTATION
> It would help a lot to have more graphical information regarding the 
> Eclipse architecture. A friend of mine is currently looking for a technical
> documentation project (volunteer) - please let me know if you guys 
> need his help.
> 

We definitely can use any and all help.  I am splitting out the doc.
structure, then (hopefully Monday), I'll post specific things folks could help
out with.