Dojo Builder release candidate 1 available

The first release candidate of DojoBuilder has just been released. DojoBuilder is an Eclipse RCP based tool for generating customised builds of the Dojo Ajax toolkit. It provides a number of useful utilities for working with Dojo, including checking out the source code from source control (Subversion), configuring the build, and running the build. For information on what it can do, check out

• my first post on the subject or
• The post on the second beta release

In addition to previous features described here, Dojo Builder now supports custom modules and XDomain builds. See http://dojobuilder.skynet.ie for documentation and download details.

Linux release of DojoBuilder beta

The first Linux release of DojoBuilder beta has been released, after my epic effort at getting Ubuntu 6.10 installed on my Thinkpad. DojoBuilder is an Eclipse RCP based tool for generating customised builds of the Dojo Ajax toolkit. It provides a number of useful utilities for working with Dojo, including checking out the source code from source control (Subversion), configuring the build, and running the build. For information on what it can do, check out my first post on the subject.

The following downloads are available:

• Windows standalone version
• Linux standalone version (tested on Ubuntu Edgy)
• Eclipse update site , for integrating DojoBuilder with your development environment.

These previous posts explain further about the capabilities of DojoBuilder.

• First beta release of Dojo build tool
• Second beta of DojoBuilder released

First beta release of Dojo build tool

Update: A second beta release of DojoBuilder is now available, click here.

Following on from my earlier post about the Eclipse RCP based tool I was building for Dojo, the first beta release is now available. You should read my first post on the subject for an overview on what it is, why it exists and what capabilities it has.

Steps to use the tool (Windows only for the moment, other builds coming soonish):

1. Make sure you have Java 5 or greater installed on your machine. You can get it from http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index_jdk5.jsp , click on the download button next to “Java Runtime Environment (JRE) 5.0 Update 10“. Once it’s installed, make sure that you your PATH variable is set correctly by opening a command prompt (Start/Run/cmd) and typing “java -version”. It should print out a version of 1.5 or higher.
2. Download my tool from http://www.skynet.ie/~sos/dojobuilder/downloads/DojoBuilder.zip .
3. Extract the zip file and click on the DojoBuilder.exe file. This opens the application with four view panes.
   1. Ant Builder Control – This is used to specify the Ant build file to use
   2. Ant Settings – This contains the Dojo-specific tooling, e.g. Subversion tooling to download builds, selecting specific build targets, doing extra compression on the Javascript files etc.
   3. Ant Properties – Lists the user editable properties on the Ant build project. Usually you shouldn’t have to touch these if you don’t want to, the Dojo tooling should take care of it.
   4. Ant Targets – Lists the available Ant targets. You shouldn’t have to touch these if you don’t want to, just use the “Target Set” combo box in the “Ant Settings” pane.
4. Choose a Dojo build you want to use in the “SVN Repository” combo box (only nightly and 0.4.1 have been tested so far).
5. Click the “Use customized Build Source” checkbox.
6. Choose a Target Set you want to build. “Release” is the most common.
7. Choose a “Build Profile” you want to build, or just leave it at the default.
8. Click the “Build” button.

This should result in a Dojo build being created in the “release” folder of your checked out source files. By default, these are placed in your home directory, as shown in the “Svn Dir” text box. You can change this if you like. You can also change where you want the built files to be placed by changing the “Build Dest” text box.

There is an additional option to “Super Compress” the files. This uses the Packer compressor to compress either the dojo.js file (your main Dojo file) or even all files in the Dojo tree (note that compressing all files may not be very reliable at the moment). To use this, check one or both of the “Super Compress” and “Compress All Files” checkboxes. Note that while these are extremely effective and result in very (very!) small javascript files, this step is very slow and should usually only be used before deploying the code to your application.

As this is the very first beta release, it is of course not yet perfect. If you have any issues, please reply to this post with details.

Update: A second beta release of DojoBuilder is now available, click here.

Setting the working directory for an Ant Java task

Just a tiny Ant tip – I’ve been fooling around with Apache Ant for the first time, and needed to change the working directory so that, rather than it being the folder in which the build.xml file is located, it be somewhere else. This enables files in other directories (which I don’t control) to use relative paths to other files. I tried setting the System’s “user.dir” and “basedir” properties, but these didn’t work.

So, the solution is very simple, in your <java> task, set “fork” to true, and then set the “dir” property to the folder you want to use as a working directory.

e.g.

<target name=”doMyBidding”>

<java fork=”true” dir=”c:\work\lib”>

……..

</java>

</target>

No doubt this has been documented somewhere else, but a quick search on Google didn’t readily find it for me, so here you go. Enjoy!