Build & development environment

This chapter details the environment needed to setup a JNode development environment.

Sub-Projects

JNode has been divided into several sub-projects in order to keep it "accessible". These sub-projects are:

Each sub-project has the same directory structure:

Eclipse

JNode is usually developed in Eclipse. (It can be done without)
The various sub-projects must be imported into eclipse. Since they reference each other, it is advisably to import them in the following order:

1. core
2. shell
3. fs
4. gui
5. net
6. builder
7. distr
8. all
9. sound
10. textui
11. cli

For a more details please have a look at this Howto.

IntelliJ IDEA

JetBrains Inc has donated a Open Source License for Intellij IDEA to the dedicated developers working on JNode.

Developers can get a license by contacting Martin.
Setup of the sub-projects is done with using the modules feature like with Eclipse.

One should increase the max memory used in the bin/idea.exe.vmoptions or bin/idea.sh.vmoptions file, edit the -Xmx line to about 350mb. IntelliJ can be downloaded at http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/download/ Use at least version 5.1.1. Note that this version can import Eclipse projects.

Requirements for building under Windows

1. Make sure that you have a Sun JDK for Java 1.6.0 at or near the most recent patch level. (Some older patch levels are known to cause obscure problems with JNode builds.)
2. Make sure that the pathname for the root directory your JNode tree contains no spaces. (Spaces in the pathname are likely to break the build.)
3. Create a "bin" directory to holds some utilities; see below.
4. Use the "System" control panel to add the "bin" directory to your windows %PATH%.
5. Download the "nasm" assembler from http://nasm.sourceforge.net. (Make sure that you get the Win32 version not the DOS32 version!)
6. Open the downloaded ZIP file, and copy the "nasm.exe" file to your "bin" directory. Then rename it to "nasmw.exe".

Now, can start a Windows command prompt, change directory to the JNode root, and build JNode as explained the next section.

Requirements for building under Linux

1. Make sure that you have a Sun JDK for Java 1.6.0 at or near the most recent patch level. (Some older patch levels are known to cause obscure problems with JNode builds.)
2. Make sure that the 'nasm' assembler is installed. If not, use "System>Add/Remove Software" (or your system's equivalent) to install it.

Building

Running "build.sh" or "build.bat" with no arguments to list the available build targets. Then choose the target that best matches your target environment / platform.

Alternatively, from within Eclipse, execute the "all" target of all/build.xml. Building in Eclipse is not advised for Eclipse version 2.x because of the amount of memory the build process takes. From Eclipse 3.x make sure to use Ant in an external process.

A JNode build will typically generate in the following files:

Some builds also generate an ISO image which you can burn to disk, and then use to boot into JNode from a CD / DVD drive.