[kepler-dev] Re: Kepler question

[Matt Jones]

Hi Dan,

Daniel Higgins wrote:
> Hi Matt,
>    I think your suggestion is a good one, although keeping our version 
> in synch with Ptolemy may indeed be difficult! [But I can't think of a 
> better idea.]
> 
>    FYI, there are some problems with our current ant build. 
Yeah, I know.  When I wrote it, I wrote it fast and intentionally left 
stuff out, thinking that we'd eventually figure out why make is so slow. 
   Now I think we should add these features in, but possibly in a 
different target so that people don't have to run that stuff every time 
they build (e.g., javadocs).

For example,
> we don't copy the source into the jar so that the 'Look Inside' command 
> doesn't show the source for atomic actors (unless the PTII dir was built 
> with 'make') Also, the make build includes building javadocs, which are 
> needed for the 'Documentation' menu for actors. Also, there seem to be a 
> few icons/images that can't be located with the ant build. It seems that 
> one reason the make build takes so long is that it does a number of 
> things we don't do yet in the ant build!
Yep. Lets fix that.  Another thing we need to do is check dependencies 
for some of the optional Ptolemy features, and include that source in 
the build iff the dependencies are satisfied.  For example, java3D, 
jxta, matlab all have dependencies that aren't always satisfied -- check 
them, and then build if appropriate.  I just hacked it and excluded them 
to get stuff running under a somewhat faster build cycle than was 
possible using the ptolemy make-based system.  We need to fix my hack. 
Lo siento.

> 
>    Also, what do you think about using JavaWebStart for distributing 
> Kepler? It seems to work well for Ptolemy and is easier than downloading 
> an installer.

I think its a great idea.  Helps a lot with packaging discipline. 
However, it doesn't replace a full installer -- JWS is still only 
workable for people who kinda understand java and how JWS works.  The 
installer with JRE can work for anyone and is more traditional.  One 
possibility would be to modify Chad's Anthill builds to export the build 
products to a snapshot dir that is configured for JWS, so that each time 
a snapshot is  built and passes tests using anthill the web-jws version 
is updated -- so nightly builds become easy for others to use.

Matt

> 
> Dan
> 
> ----
> 
> Matt Jones wrote:
> 
>> Hi Dan,
>>
>> Yeah, I think its a classpath thing.  I think Ilkay or Efrat set it 
>> up.  The way I was doing it, though, was to copy the class to the PTII 
>> dir and compile there, and excluded from the Kepler build.  The 
>> current situation is not an ideal situation, so we should probably 
>> come up with a fix.  Seems to me that we want to be building against 
>> the PTII head of CVS, or at least a stable tag.  So I've talked with 
>> Chad and Efrat about checking in a copy of PTII into our CVS so that 
>> we have access to that tree directly.  Then changes could be made 
>> directly there, and we coul dgenerate patches to submit to the PT 
>> group.  We'd have one person be responsible for keeping our copy 
>> psynched with theirs, but that might be a difficult task.  Got any 
>> suggestions?
>>
>> Matt
>>
>> Dan Higgins wrote:
>>
>>> Matt,
>>>
>>>    I am trying to understand the Kepler/Ptolemy build system. You 
>>> created a new version of the BasicGraphFrame.java class that 
>>> 'replaces' the PTII version and adds the data tab to the left of the 
>>> Graph pane. The compiled version gets put into the kepler.jar. But 
>>> the original version is in the ptolemy.jar file in the ptII 
>>> directory. Is the new class used simply because the jar it is in 
>>> appears first in the classpath, or is there something I don't 
>>> understand about the system?
>>>
>>> Dan
>>
>>
>>
> 
> 

-- 
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Matt Jones                                     jones at nceas.ucsb.edu
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/    Fax: 425-920-2439    Ph: 907-789-0496
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
University of California Santa Barbara
Interested in ecological informatics? http://www.ecoinformatics.org
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