Building and hacking

This page will help you set up a development environment and presents a development workflow.

Java 8
Play framework, automatically downloaded and installed with ./activator
Ivy, also installed automatically
All code related to communicating with the Pipeline engine through the web API lives in pipeline-clientlib-java
In order to test the complete functionality of the UI, a running instance of the Pipeline engine is required.

For the latest up to date version, check out the branch "big-update".
Make sure $JAVA_HOME points to Java 8.
For some reason the application is unable to initialize the database itself, therefore upon the first run copy a clean pre-initialized version of the database:
```
rm -r dp2webui && cp -r dp2webui-cleandb dp2webui
```
Build and run the application by bringing up a shell with ./activator (or alternatively a graphical interface with ./activator ui) and invoking playRun. Changes to the code are automatically picked up.

An Eclipse project can be generated with ./activator eclipse.
Compile and run the application as explained above.
Compilation errors appear in the application itself as well as the activator shell (or ui).
The most straightforward and effective way to test/debug the application is to test it manually in the browser.
In addition, print dumps can be made with console.log (JavaScript) and Logger.info (Java).
Watching the network traffic in the development tools of your browser can also be useful.
Your best option for getting an instance of the Pipeline engine up and running is through the "dev-launcher" build of pipeline-assembly. This method allows you to easily build a custom version of the engine, and changes to engine components are automatically and dynamically loaded. For more details see https://github.com/snaekobbi/wiki/wiki/Building#pipeline-assembly.
Whenever you want to update to a new (development) version of pipeline-clientlib-java, ???

Derby (database) can cause difficulties during development, sometimes the Play process or the activator needs to be restarted.

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