IMPORTANT NOTICE

This software is in alpha phase. This means that you will not find here an easy installer to do all the dirty job and you will not find any user documentation. You may continue on your own risk!

System Requirements

The software was tested to run on the following configuration:

  1. Windows XP Professional SP2 and  Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop Edition
  2.  Sun JRE/JDK 6.0
  3.  Eclipse SDK 3.3.1
  4.  Maven 2.0.7
  5.  Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0/7.0 and/or  Mozilla 1.7+ based browsers

NOTES:

  • the software may run on other operating systems
  • the software may run on later versions of the software packages listed above

Installation Instructions

  1. Download the  Eclipse plugin ZIP Archive
  2. Unzip it into your Eclipse plugins directory
  3. Ensure that you have a M2_HOME environment variable pointing to your Maven installation, otherwise the Eclipse wireXN Plugin will not be able to find the Maven executable -- if that variable does not exist you should create it manually
  4. (Re-)Start Eclipse

NOTES:

  • in order to have better control over Eclipse plugins installation you would prefer to create a separate Eclipse plugins directory -- see  Manage your Eclipse environment -- Method 1 for details
  • if you are upgrading from a previous version it is better to remove all wireXN files from your Eclipse plugins directory, otherwise old resources may remain

Installation Checks

OK. If you are here I assume that you have completed the previous steps successfully ;-) Then how do you check the installation?

  1. Opening the wireXN Development Perspective:
    1. go to Windows > Open Perspective > Other
    2. double-click the wireXN Development Perspective
  2. Creating a new wireXN Project:
    1. go to File > New and select wireXN Project
    2. in the new wireXN Project Wizard accept the defaults by clicking OK
    3. check that the wizard has created a wireXN project
  3. Building the wireXN project:
    1. build the project by selecting Project > Clean
    2. check that the project builds by inspecting the Eclipse console
    3. after the build completes check that a target directory exists under your project directory and the error marker disappeared
  4. Running the Hello World application:
    1. in the wireXN Project Navigator expand the src/main/wpl/ source folder (the one that has a source folder icon)
    2. expand the my.groupid package
    3. select Application/1 and on the context menu select Run As > wireXN Environment
    4. a browser instance should open and the Hello World application should run inside of it
  5. Debugging the Hello World application -- TBD

KNOWN ISSUES

  • in order to launch/debug the application you need to manually copy the files and folders from <your-project-dir>/target/dependency to <your-project-dir>/target/classes -- see the defect report at  lang:#122
  • the debugger implementation is extremely slow -- see the defect report at  lang:comment:ticket:106:10
  • other issues are available here:  http://trac.wirexn.net/lang/roadmap

TROUBLESHOOTING NOTES

  • the Eclipse wireXN Builder requires the M2_HOME environment variable
  • the Maven build process requires a network connection in order to download the required Maven plugins and wireXN components, please check that your firewall does not block it
  • if Eclipse does not launch a browser instance, then you should be able to run the application manually by openning a browser instance and dragging the <your-project-dir>/target/classes/my/groupid/Application-1.env.xml file into that browser instance