Hi folks! I am a graphic designer who has taught myself web development over the last few years. I have been using jQuery for the behaviour layer of a site since maybe March this year and absolutely love it. From a Mac-oriented, drag and drop,user-friendly perspective, jQuery makes javascript like it just "should be".
However, I find the Subversion stuff very hard to grasp. Am I right that we actually need to use the command line (gasp!) for much of this? I have given John Resig's help steps my best shot but didn't quite get there. Step 1, install JRE, I went to that address but had no idea which download was for me so instead I assumed that Mac OS X would already have the right version installed. Step 2, I downloaded Ant and found the 'lib' and 'bin' folders and copied them to a folder as instructed at that site. I chose a folder named Ant that I created in my Applications folder. I didn't know what to do after that. The "install instructions" do not help me as they assume that I have a greater understanding of what is going on than I do: > * Add the bin directory to your path. How do I do this? > * Set the ANT_HOME environment variable to the directory where > you installed Ant. On some operating systems the ant wrapper > scripts can guess ANT_HOME (Unix dialects and Windows NT/2000) - > but it is better to not rely on this behavior. I am getting the feeling that I am supposed to know how to do this - probably in the command line? > * Optionally, set the JAVA_HOME environment variable (see the > Advanced section below). This should be set to the directory where > your JDK is installed. Again - I'm lost. I am obviously missing something here - can we not just have some sort of friendly web interface that retrieves the latest version of jQuery and whatever else this "Ant build" gives you? This seems like a high barrier to entry considering the potential demographic that jQuery is aimed at (web designers and developers). The more I think about it the more I realise I am missing something here - especially as no-one else seems bothered by this. I understand what software developers use SVN for but do not understand why the general user of the software is required to set up all these Java/ Apache/Ant/SVN technologies just to retrieve an up-to-date version to use. Thanks for your time and sorry for the long post. Joel. On 17/08/2006, at 7:24 AM, John Resig wrote: > Step 1: > Go to this page and download and install "Java Runtime Environment > (JRE) 5.0": > http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp > > Step 2: > Download and install Apache Ant: > http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi > > Step 3: > Go to the jQuery directory and type 'ant'. You now have a compiled > version of jQuery, the documentation, and the test suite. > > Steps 2 & 3 Change depending if you're using Ant or the Makefile. > Since jQuery now includes the Ant build file, it's much easier to > simply use that (and more cross-platform). For UNIX-type people, like > myself, I'll just see the Makefile, type Make, and be done with it. > > I recommend that you check out the new, updated, README file in jQuery > SVN - as it explains this whole process. > > --John > > _______________________________________________ > jQuery mailing list > [email protected] > http://jquery.com/discuss/ > > _______________________________________________ jQuery mailing list [email protected] http://jquery.com/discuss/
