Compiling the ActiveBPEL Engine


This document describes how to compile the ActiveBPEL engine.


Dependencies
============

The ActiveBPEL engine requires an installed and properly configured servlet
container. It has been tested with Tomcat. The compile scripts that come
with the ActiveBPEL engine use the environment variable CATALINA_HOME, which
defines the top-level Tomcat directory. The ActiveBPEL engine should run under
any standard servlet container.

You may download Tomcat from the Tomcat Web site
(http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat) or from the ActiveBPEL download page
(http://www.activebpel.org/download).

The compile script included with the source uses the Ant build tool. You can
download Ant from the Ant Web site
(http://ant.apache.org/)


Downloading the Software
========================

Download the most recent version of the ActiveBPEL engine from the ActiveBPEL
download page (http://www.activebpel.org/download). You will have a choice of
downloading either a .tar.gz file or a .zip file. Both archives contain the
same files. The name of the archive will be activebpel-version-type.tar.gz or
activebpel-version-type.zip. "Version" is a version number like "1.0.1".
"Type" is one of "src" (source), "bin" (binaries), or "all" (source and
binaries). To compile ActiveBPEL, you will need either the "src" or "all" type.

Extract the distribution from the archive using your favorite command line or
GUI tool. Doing so will create a directory named activebpel-version. You may
create, rename, or move this directory anywhere you wish. For the rest of this
document, we will simply call this directory "activebpel".


Compiling the Source
====================

To compile the source into deployable JAR and WAR files, open a console / 
command window and change to the activebpel/projects/support directory. Execute 
the following Ant command:

ant -f activebpel.xml activebpel.all

JAR and WAR files will be output to activebpel/dist.


Building with Eclipse
=====================

The ActiveBPEL Engine is developed using the Eclipse IDE, however the archives
do not ship with .project or .classpath files for use with Eclipse. To create
these, simply use Eclipse to create a new project for each of the directories
in the activebpel/projects directory.

Once you've created a project for a given directory, you'll then need to modify
the project Properties to add the appropriate entries to the Java Build Path /
Libraries. The jars required are in activebpel/lib . There will also be some
Java Build Path / Projects dependencies you'll need to resolve as well.

You can get hints for these dependencies if you look in the 
ae.build.properties file in the activebpel/projects/* directory. See the
"project.class.path=..." section. If the dependency begins with "ae_", then 
that's a checkbox in the Project Properties / Java Build Path / Projects tab.
The rest are references to External Jars you'll add via the Project Properties
/ Java Build Path / Libraries tab.

Please see your Eclipse documentation for more details on how to do this.


For additional information, you can visit the ActiveBPEL Support Forum
(http://forums.activebpel.org/)