Setting up your environment

Install Java Development Kit

In order to run Neptus, first you need to install a Java version 11 runtime environment (JRE), OpenJDK works well. Moreover, if you want to extend Neptus, you need to have a Java Development Kit (JDK) so that you can compile and package your code into a jar plug-in. So download the latest Java JDK 11 from OpenJDK, Adoptium or Oracle.

Check here for updated development notes. (Transcribed bellow.)

IDE

IntelliJ

Just import the Gradle project to Idea. To run or debug be sure to use the classpath from neptus.main. At the moment you need to not delegate the Gradle tasks run to Gradle but to IntelliJ.

• ./gradlew cleanIdeaBuild to delete the project and build folders

To debug run the Gradle task run in debug mode.

Eclipse

⚠️ WARNING: It is a bit tricky with Eclipse to compile and debug. Recommend the IntelliJ IDE.

To use in Eclipse don't create the project but import the Gradle project into Eclipse.

• ./gradlew eclipse to create the project (can be used, but configure the debug runs still WIP)
• ./gradlew cleanEclipseBuild to delete the project build folders
• ./gradlew cleanEclipse to delete the project

This is sometimes not stable. If problems with building do:

• If problem with duplicated resource on neptus project do: ** ./gradlew cleanEclipseBuild createEclipseBuild

Plugins

The plugins are expected to reside on folders with names plugins-dev<*>. On the 'plugins-dev' are the plugins offer by Neptus. The extra plugins-dev* folders if exist are read and instrumented for Gradle (should be on separated Git repositories).

Each plugins is instrumented by Gradle in its jar task for its output to be placed on the plugins folder. The Jar will be a fat jar with all libs in it. The folder structure is expected to be the following:

• src/java (Java src files)
• src/resources (resource files, optional)
• lib (for libs that are not able to be added through Maven, they will be added to dependencies automatically, optional)
• build.gradle (to add dependencies, optional)

One very important rule is that a plugin is self-contained, only dependent on the main src and jars and not on any other plugin.