Version 2.4

Description

This is release 2.4 of the jazz development environment. This increment introduces productivity features that make plugin development more straight forward. Also, some work went into maintenance such as upgrading dependencies, improving logging and error messages and doing some refactoring work.

Summary

• Upgrading is safe, all previous stable features have only received bug fixes where necessary
• To be extra safe, consider creating a backup before upgrading

Upgrading

Refer to the Version 2.1 release for upgrade instructions, as they are practically identical in this release. Especially, make sure to run the ./gradlew upgrade task after pulling in the newest changes.

Features

• 7.0 Support. Download Page
• A download task for downloading sdk and server files directly from IBM. Wiki link
• A task for deploying plugins to a local JTS server for integration testing. Documentation coming soon.
• Automatic configuration of a local JTS server. Documentation coming soon.
• Support for the new Windows Terminal. Updated wiki on windows command line
• Improvements to the creation of new sdk configurations, including automated download of required dropins. Upgraded wiki to newest changes
• Made version for sdk initialization configurable Upgraded wiki to newest changes

Bug Fixes

• Fix unexpected empty directories causing a Null Pointer Exception in the Info Task
• Added a work-around for feature based launches causing launch errors after a fresh initialization

Known Bugs

• The bootstrap task doesn't copy the jts_locations.cfg file. After bootstrap, upgrade must be run to avoid an error when attempting to use the local deploying capabilities of the jazz-debug-environment.

Version 2.3

Description

This is release 2.3 of the jazz development environment. Many incubating features are now deemed stable, and have also been documented in the Wiki.

Summary

• Upgrading is safe, all previous stable features have only received bug fixes where necessary
• To be extra safe, consider creating a backup before upgrading

Upgrading

Refer to the Version 2.1 release for upgrade instructions, as they are practically identical in this release. Especially, make sure to run the ./gradlew upgrade task after pulling in the newest changes.

Features

• 7.0RC3 Support. Download Page
• Automated creation of p2 repositories, documented in the wiki
• Automated preparation of new sdk relases, documented in the wiki
• Support for customized log4j settings, enabling detailed logging in the jazz development environment, documented in the wiki
• Support for non-ibm or otherwise custom java sdks, documented in the wiki
• Support for configuring an eclipse proxy for use with the eclipse-specific tasks, documented in the wiki
• Gradle Upgrade to Version 6.2. This comes with deprecation warnings of features that will not be supported in Gradle 7.0 and beyond. However, these can only be fixed gradually, as many plugins we depend on have not been brought up to speed. We will only migrate to Gradle 7+ once all of these regressions have been fixed.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where the p2use task would create invalid repository ids on Windows.
• Fixed a bug where the p2use task would fail if no previous settings file could be found.
• Fixed a bug where running the info task would fail if bootstrap had not been run yet.
• Fixed a bug where p2 repository creation would fail for SDK Versions later than 6.0.6.

Version 2.1

Description

This is a pre-release of new jazz development environment features. The main reason for including non-stable features is the release of 6.0.6.1, which has warranted the inclusion of a semi-automated workflow for creating a new runtime from an sdk zip file. The new database and sdk_files included in this pull request have been created using said feature. Dog fooding seems reasonable in this case.

This is the first release of files that have been created using this new technique.

The new features are currently unstable, but have proven to work for creating the new 6.0.6.1 files.

Summary

• You are safe to upgrade if you are using the jazz development environment for creating plugins
• If you want to be very safe, create a backup before you go ahead with the upgrade instructions
• There are new features that you are welcome to use at your own risk

Upgrading

This release includes a new upgrade command. It updates an existing jde folder with the files required for using 6.0.6.1 and some of the new features without touching any files in the user folder.

Please note that running the upgrade command multiple times can result in false-positive errors. You can ignore them unless you think files are being overwritten that are inside your user folder.

Fresh installation

If you are creating a fresh environment with this release, just follow the previous wiki instructions on how to create a working environment.

Upgrading an existing installation

Upgrading to a new release of the jde should be fairly simple. If you are going ahead with this, you are probably interested in using 6.0.6.1 for development.

Preparation

You have to download the new releases required for the jde to run.

1. Server SDK
2. Windows CCM or Linux CCM
3. Copy the RTC-SDK-Server-6.0.6.1.zip to the jde/sdks folder
4. Copy the JTS-CCM-keys.zip to the jde/servers folder

Upgrade Procedure

Note that this is the first release including an upgrade procedure. If you encounter problems, please open an issue with as many details as you can!

1. If you want to be on the safe side, consider doing a full backup ./gradlew backup --mode=full. Note that this can take a considerable amount of time.
2. Get the newest changes: git remote update && git pull
3. Run the upgrade command: ./gradlew upgrade

You are now ready to create a 6.0.6.1 runtime

4. ./gradlew setup will create a runtime for 6.0.6.1

Features

Stable Features

• 6.0.6.1 support

Incubating Features

• Automated database and sdk file creation from a new RTC release
• Creation of P2 repositories from run times
• Automatic maven configuration of local p2 repositories
• Target Platform exploration in an automatically deployed eclipse IDE

Documentation of new features is incomplete, as they are not stable. Previous functionality should continue to work in the same way. As a general rule of thumb, all gradle tasks that are in the Jazz Development Environment group are considered stable for general users. Reference the build.gradle file for all tasks.

All other tasks are either for hacking on the tool itself (jde development group), or unstable if they are unclassified. You are welcome to test these features, but be aware that they are:

1. Going to change in breaking ways
2. Probably unstable in usage

Before working with them, I advise backing up your environment or creating an isolated environment for testing purposes. Be aware that the p2 repository features can break your maven configuration. A backup is created in the backup folder, but you will have to manually address breakage to your maven configuration!

Bug fixes

• Improved handling of release versions
• Improved logging

Notes

Once again, thank you @MartinBenninger for helping with testing of this new release.

Development Environment

Complete re-implementation of the previous debug environment functionality. The Pull Request summarizes the changes and fixes, and the wiki is the best place to get started.

Debug Environment 1.0

Original release of the jazz debug environment.