INSTALLATION GUIDE



Two different types of installation are available, depending on the use you make of the Opale library : the user installation and the developer installation.

They are mostly identical, but the developer installation consists in defining environmental variables in order to use scripts making the compilation task easier.

1)USER INSTALLATION

In order to use the library's classes in your own programms, the entire path of the opale.jar archive has to be placed in the CLASSPATH variable. For instance, in bash:

export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/home/cioni/OpaleV1b2/opale.jar

Another possibility consists in giving each time the path of the archive to the virtual java machine, for instance:

java -classpath .:/home/cioni/OpaleV1b2/opale.jar MyClass

If you wish to use the Opale library in an applet, you must write down the path of the opale.jar archive in the ARCHIVE field of the applet tag. For instance, if the opale.jar archive is to be found at the same level as the applet class, you write :

<APPLET CODEBASE=. CODE=AppletOpale.class ARCHIVE="opale.jar" WIDTH=500 >


2)DEVELOPER INSTALLATION (UNICES ONLY)

This installation concerns you if you wish to develop your own classes directly in the project and/or modify, upgrade existing classes. Its goal is to give the developer some scripts which make the project's compilation, as well as the creation of API dcumlentation, an easier process.

In order to decompress the sources:  jar xvf opale_src.jar  

You obtain the Opale directory and the sub-directories which correspond to the existng modules in the current version of Opale.

If you wish to work with these sources, the entire path for the Opale directory has to be written down in the CLASSPATH. For instance, under the shell bash : 

export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/home/cioni/OpaleV1b2/

if opale/ is to be found in /home/cioni/OpaleV1b2/

Moreover, in order to benefit from the different tools (existing scripts in the sub-directory utils/sh/), the OPALE.DIR environmental variable has to be placed so that it also contains the path to the Opale directory. This variable allows to use the scripts which are contained in utils/sh/ and which simplify the compilation task see utils/sh/documentation.txt for more information. For instance in bash : 

export OPALE_DIR=/home/cioni/OpaleV1b2/

Finally, you can add the path $OPALE_DIR/utils/sh to the PATH environmental variable in order to access any scripts directly. In bash : 

export PATH=$PATH:$OPALE_DIR/utils/sh

The automation of these tasks is possible, for instance by writing the precedent instructions in the .bash_profile file which is executed each time the terminal under bash is opened.

For the time being, these scripts are only written in shell sh and therefore work under most Unix systems. A DOS version of these scripts is being developped.


TIPS

If you wish to work with different versions of Opale, it might be usefull to create a symbolic link as follows:

ln -s  ~/OpaleV1b2/ ~/Opale


You shall change that link each time you wish to change the version. That way, your PATH, CLASSPATH and OPALE.DIR can always stay on  ~/Opale . 

Once the installation is done, you can test the archive by typing java.opale.Info : if an information message about Opale appears, the installation has been done successfully. After, it is possible to run test cases. For these, read the TEST.TXT. file.