Contents: - Hot tip - Rant - Suggestions for a Solution
Yesterday a new intern started and we set out to set up a WO development system. This was a virgin Lion 10.7.3. Fortunately I know what to do but my intern would have given up half way through, even with the latest docs from the wiki. Oh, and this morning we are still not really up to speed. I wouldn't dare to think what a newbie experiences trying to get started. I am really angry and couldn't sleep tonight. Lots of thoughts were spiraling through my dreams. I will try to note those here but first a HOT TIP: ********* A virgin Lion system does not have the git command line command. Probably nobody really realised this because most of you (certainly I) had installed the Apple Developer Tools before Xcode-as-a-selfcontained-app. Such an installation would have put all the command line tools like git into some unix paths. Now with Xcode as a self-contained app the command line tools are still there - inside the app bundle Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Tools... and .../usr subdirs. Just add that to your $PATH. What newbie would have guessed while following the instructions to install WonderSource?? MADNESS REIGNS ********************** Now here is what makes me really mad (and drives any newbie as fast and far away from WOnder as imaginable): - Installation instructions are scattered around in various places in the wiki - nowhere are instruction in what order the installation has to be done - git? What git? My system responds with unknown command - golipse is an app - oh, and why do I know that I should look for something called golipse? - woinstaller.jar is a command line program, why not an app too? - there are lots of references to places in the file system that are not transparent to many users - instructions to build the WOnder frameworks are confusing, referencing a file called build.properties and something called wolips.properties and building with eclipse and building with ant and what is relevant in which case? And there are at least 3 different pages in the wiki about installing the frameworks that contradict each other... - and a virgin Lion does not have Java installed and makes golipse having hickup: running golipse starts to download Eclipse and it then tries to do something with Java. Lion prompts the user to download Java, works ok, but in the meantime golipse is finished with whatever it was doing. At the end we have a working Eclipse without WOLips plugins (newbies do not realise this). Next instruction says start eclipse, switch to WOlips perspective (what? where do I find that? there is nothing like WOlips) and create a (dummy) project just to generate the default wolips.properties. And at this point we have probably lost everyone trying to follow the instructions. Good Night folks! Anyway this morning we tried further and installed WOlips manually via Eclipse update manager. We were even able to download WonderSource after having put Xcode.app onto the machine. I told my intern to follow the wiki about working with WonderSource inside Eclipse and eventually he gets the following when trying to WOlips-AntTools->Install Buildfile: /Users/gabor/Desktop/Development/WonderSource/Frameworks/Ajax/Ajax/build.xml install: Ajax.all: global.environment: global.properties: global.framework.install: BUILD FAILED /Users/gabor/Desktop/Development/WonderSource/Frameworks/Ajax/Ajax/build.xml:17: The following error occurred while executing this line: /Users/gabor/Desktop/Development/WonderSource/Build/build/build.xml:778: The following error occurred while executing this line: /Users/gabor/Desktop/Development/WonderSource/Build/build/generic.xml:526: /Users/gabor/Roots/Ajax.framework does not exist. This is after about 8 hours work in front of the screen. WE NEED A WORKING TURNKEY SOLUTION - ASAP! And I need a new intern as the other one just jumped out the window :-((( POSSIBLE SOLUTION ************************* Here are my ideas from a sleepless night. I see a fully self-contained downloadable package similar to what Apple does with Xcode that contains a fully loaded and configured Eclipse with all the WOlips plugins installed. Create a directory inside Eclipse (maybe packaged as a plugin?) that encapsulates the WonderSource and precompiled binaries (the WOnder Frameworks). Let WOlips's default wolips.properties point to these framework directories. Create a mechanism that upon each start of this Eclipse executable it checks if the WebObjects frameworks are installed (I know we cannot deliver those directly inside the Eclipse package but must load them from an Apple server). The startup task could download WebObjects mimicking the woinstaller.jar functionality. This functionality could also be made available in the WOlips project properties and/or in the WOlips context menu for a manual download (might not be needed). The download URL must point to a fixed location on wocommunity or whatever and must be rerouted from there to the real Apple server. This would prevent things from breaking when Apple eventually decides to (re)move the WO downloads. A user would probably not mind downloading a couple 100 MB and waiting an hour for everything to settle but then everything "just works". And don't tell me the Wonder Frameworks and WOlips will be outdated eventually. Yes, they will, but the newbie user does not care. Nobody cares if the latest and greatest is there when it does not work. Better get startet with something a couple months old THAT WORKS! When packaging Wonder (and WebObjects) as a plugin we can provide an update site and have to user at any time update his installation to the latest and greatest and still have something THAT JUST WORKS! As there is still a wolips.properties inside Eclipse package we can provide to the experience used clear (not contradicting! ) instructions how to customize the whole setup. All of this does not prevent the experienced user to play with the wonder source and build his/her own frameworks. BUT STILL IT WORKS INITIALLY OUT OF THE BOX!! I think this is the way to go. What do you think? Have fun (yes, *I* still do!) ---markus---
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