Tips on building JTOpen (©,® IBM)

Note: There is no warranty or guarantee.
- This free advice is worth what you paid for it!
Note: This page is not connected with nor supported by IBM.
- I am just a JTOpen fan!

JTOpen is an immense Java library which provides native and client facilities relating to the IBM iSeries (AS/400)®.

JTOpen is coded in IBM-style open source. The JTOpen libraries and/or source may be downloaded from the project as archives, or checked out via anonymous CVS.

JTOpen source presents certain difficulties in building. Here are some notes from my experiences which the advanced open source coder might find useful in getting started. Please to improve this page.

It is easier to deal with JTOpen source simply by checking it out via anonymous CVS than it is to deal with co-ordinating the unpacked download archive with the build process.
- This document from here onwards assumes you obtained the source in this fashion (anonymous CVS).
The readme.html file should be read for overview and historical reasons but the build instructions found there are entirely out of date and presently unusable.
- Ignore the build instructions in readme.html and proceed to the build instructions found near the head of the file build/build.xml.
To build JTOpen you will need to download, and build specific subcomponents certain other open source as described in the build instructions found near the head of the file build/build.xml.
- Pay special attention to the instructions about where to transfer to particular directories certain individual components of the open source you build
  - I.e., it's not enough to build, install, and reference in your CLASSPATH these extra components.

In the following example, I created a directory called /usr/local/work/java/jtopen_build and cd'ed into that directory to check out the source. After downloading, building and moving the required extra open source components required (as described above), the following script was sufficient to build the system:

          
          BUILD_DIR=/usr/local/work/java/jtopen_build

           CLASSPATH=/usr/local/ant/lib/ant.jar:${BUILD_DIR}/build

           export CLASSPATH

           cd ${BUILD_DIR}/build

           #ant -Dbuild=${BUILD_DIR} source >
          build_source.report 2>&1

           ant -Dbuild=${BUILD_DIR} all > build_all.report
          2>&1

I have commented out the line which invokes the source target of build/build.xml since this line is only necessary when you wish to update your source. At the present writing, the build instructions found near the head of the file build/build.xml. seem to imply it is necessary to run the source target to build the system, but this is not the case, providing that you obtained your source through anoncvs and checked everything out, i.e., you started by checking out build/build.xml and checked the rest out by running this very same source target at least once.

When in doubt, do as the build instructions suggest and use the

clean clean-source source all

targets in succession or together on an ant command line to build from scratch with up-to-date source.

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