Every Flavour Beans

For using most of the enterprise technologies based on Java, you generally need at least the following components installed and configured on your system:

Based on which Java based technology/framework you want to use, you may need to install further dependencies. Even though you may not need all the three components mentioned above to be able to work with all Java technologies, I found myself installing them way too many times when compared to any other Java component that I wanted a place to document the installation process of these three components specifically, if only to refer to this post from other Java tutorials in future.

Installing OpenJDK/Sun Java SE 6, Apache Maven 2 and Tomcat 5 on Fedora GNU/Linux

Installing Java SE 6
You can’t install Sun’s JDK directly from the Fedora repositories, you have the following two choices:

Installing Apache Maven2
Apache Maven 2 can be installed using yum command:

Installing Maven 2 on Fedora 9 using the yum package manager gave me the old 2.0.4 version, so I removed it and decided to install Maven manually. To manually download and extract Maven 2 archive on Fedora 9, follow these instructions:

Installing Tomcat 5 and Jetty
You can finally install tomcat and jetty servers using yum command:

The installation procedure on other GNU/Linux distributions should be on similar lines using their respective package managers and I will try to post the procedure for Ubuntu, Gentoo, openSuse and Mandriva distributions in the near future.

Testing the installation

To test the above installation, see my next post(to be published), “Hello, World” Java Web Application using Java SE 6 + Tomcat 5.5 + Maven 2.”

Installing rubygems that come with native extensions is not same on gnu/linux and Windows platforms as I have discovered recently. Apparently, it is important that the native extensions needed by the rubygem be built with the same compiler tool chain as your main ruby installation. The rubygem I needed to install was amazon-ecs and it depends on another rubygem called hpricot which comes with native extensions. Though hpricot installed fine on gnu/linux OS, I recieved the following errors on Windows:

Help on the IRC channel and some searching on the Internet provided me with the following solution: use whytheluckystiff’s repository as the source to install hpricot rubygem. Once hpricot rubygem was installed, amazon-ecs rubygem installed with no problems.

The same source works for sandbox rubygem too.

References:

I am assuming that you have everything properly setup on your computer for developing applications with the Ruby on Rails framework using Aptana Studio IDE. If not, see my previous posts:

In this post I will take you through a screenshot guided tour of the Aptana Studio (RadRails) IDE and show you how to develop a blank web application using Ruby on Rails framework and add a simple scaffold to it(”Hello, World” equivalent for Rails framework). So let’s get started.

When you run the Aptana Studio application, you will see the splash screen as shown below:

To create a new Ruby on Rails project, go to File -> New -> Project… and select Rails Project from the “Rails” folder(expand it if necessary). Enter a name for the project(say “Demo1″) and click Finish.

The main window should look like the following screenshot(click to see larger version).

Below you can see the screenshots of various sections of the main window shown above:

The Project pane on the left:

The Console window at the bottom:

The Scripts window at the right(you can access the same from the “Scripts” menu too):

The Cheat Sheets window at the extreme right:

If you click the “Click to Begin” link in the cheatsheet window(shown above), you will see the following “Dynamuc Help” window with links to various Rails help topics:

Aptana Studio supports the following views that you can enable, for example to view API documentation, try out some regular expressions etc.:

At the bottom, you can click on RubyGems tab to see a list of Ruby gems:

You might be prompted to install some Ruby gems by Aptana Studio(you can install or ignore them):

RailsPlugins tab will show you the Rails plugins that you can install with a few simple mouse clicks:

RakeTasks tab allows you to perform various rake tasks by selecting the one you want from the drop-down box:

Generators tab similarly allows you to generate a scaffold, model, controller, view etc. by selecting the appropriate option from the drop-down box:

Creating a Blank Rails Web Application using Aptana Studio

Let us put the Generators tab to use. Select “Scaffold” from the “Generator” dropdown box, enter the parameters as shown in the screenshot below and press the “Go” button.

You should see the following output in the Console tab.

You should be able to see the following migration file generated in the project directory:

And here is a screenshot showing the contents of the generated migration file:

If you now run the rake tasks “db:create:all” and “db:migrate” you should be able to see the output of commands executed in the console window:

Now run the application. You should see the following output in the internal web browser of Aptana Studio:

Click on the “New Book” link and you will see the new book form like this:

You can go back to your Rails project, make edits, generate more scaffolds, models, controllers and views and test your changes in the internal browser of Aptana Studio. And so on and so forth.

Aptana Studio IDE with RadRails plugins provides one of the richest web application development environments for Ruby on Rails framework. NetBeans 6.1, emacs/vim, IntelliJ IDEA are pretty good too and all of these are multi-platform, so why bother with Mac-only solution like Textmate? ;)

You first need to complete the first five steps of my earlier post “Setting Up Rails Development Environment on Windows Vista/XP” which explain how to install Ruby, RubyGems, Ruby on Rails, Mongrel web server and MySQL database server on Microsoft Winodws Vista/XP. You can skip the last two steps(sixth and seventh) of that post which describe how to setup NetBeans 6.1 IDE for development with the Rails framework; continue with this post instead which explains how to setup the Eclipse-based IDE Aptana Studio for developing web applications using the Ruby on Rails framework.

Download and Install Aptana Studio and RadRails plugin

Download Aptana Studio IDE, run the installer and install it on your computer(or simply extract it if you downloaded the zip file).

Run Aptana Studio. In the main window, you should see the start page of Aptana Studio(for some reason if you don’t, go to Help -> Aptana Studio Start Page…). Here you will see options to install various plugins for Aptana Studio like PHP plugin, Ruby on Rails plugin, Adobe AIR plugin etc. Click the “Install” button in the “Ruby on Rails” section.
Select Aptana RadRails checkbox and select all the available optional features available for it.

I recommend that you leave the selected default location for installation as it is and proceed with the installation.

Once the RadRails plugin is installed, it is time to configure Ruby installation in Aptana Studio. If you haven’t installed Ruby and Ruby on Rails yet, see my previous post.

Configure Ruby/Rails in Aptana Studio

That’s all we need to do to get Ruby on Rails framework configured with Aptana Studio IDE. We can now create new project and check out if everything is working properly. I have made a separate post to show how to create a basic Ruby on Rails web project in Aptana Studio and run it with the help of a lot of screenshots to introduce you to the most important features of the Aptana RadRails IDE for Rails based development, so check that out for more details.

For using most of the enterprise technologies based on Java, you generally need at least the following components installed and configured on your system:

Based on the Java based technology/framework you want to use, you may need to install further dependencies. Even though you may not need all the three components mentioned above to work with every Java technology, I found myself installing them way too many times when compared to any other Java component that I wanted a place to document the installation process of these three components specifically, if only to refer to this post from other Java tutorials.

Below I explain how to install Java SE 6, Apache Maven 2 and Apache Tomcat 5.5 software.

Installing Sun Java SE 6 on Microsoft Windows

Download Java SE 6

Download and install the latest version of Java SE(currently JDK 6 update 7). Just run the installer and follow the wizard. Note the installation directory where the wizard installs the Java package(default will be C:\Program Files\Java). You then need to set the two environment variables JAVA_HOME and PATH.

Create Java Environment Variables

Go to Control Panel -> System -> Advanced System Settings and click the “Environment Variables” button. Or Control Panel -> System, select the Advanced tab and click the “Environment Variables” button if you are using Windows XP.

Check Java Version and Confirm Install

Let us confirm the correct configuration of Java installation from the command line. Close all the open dialog boxes and start a new command prompt(Start/All Programs -> Accessories -> Command Prompt). Run the following commands in it(doesn’t matter what your current directory is):

If you get an error saying that the ‘java’ command is not recognised or is not available, then you need to check the values the above environment variables were set to once again.

For more details, refer to Sun’s instructions on how to install Java SE.

Installing Apache Maven 2 on Microsoft Windows

Download Maven 2

Download the latest stable version of Maven from Apache Maven Project website. Extract it to a directory and rename the installation directory to maven. I assume Maven is now located in c:\maven.

Create Maven 2 Environment Variables

Create a new M2_HOME environment variable. Click the New… button(below System Variables pane) and enter the details as follows:

Similarly create another environment variable called M2 and set it to the value %M2_HOME%\bin

Add %M2% to the Path variable.

Check Maven 2 Version and Confirm Install

To check if Maven is properly configured or not, start a command prompt and check its version:

For more details, refer to instructions on Maven’s website on how to install Maven 2.

Installing Apache Tomcat on Microsoft Windows

Download Tomcat 5.5

Download Apache Tomcat 5.5(or any other version of your choice) and extract the package in a directory(say C:\tomcat).

Create Tomcat Environment Variables

Next we need to add the required environment variables.

Check Tomcat Version and Confirm Install

Verify Tomcat’s installation by running the following commands in the Windows command prompt:

You will need to start and stop the tomcat service from the command line manually(or tools from other Java frameworks may do that for you automatically). But if you want to the tomcat server to start automatically when the operating service, you can install it as a Windows service. For more details, refer to instructions on Tomcat website on how to run Tomcat as a Windows service. I am not including those instructions here because I don’t run and don’t recommend running it as a service; YMMV.