Creating an AmbientTalk distribution

The easiest way to build an AmbientTalk distribution is using the Ant build tool: 1. Perform a checkout of the atbuild directory. The parent directory in which you check out this directory should have subdirectories atlib,interpreter,parser and iat. We will refer to this parent directory as the base directory. 1. Make sure the ant_contrib.jar file is either in the same directory as build.xml or copy it to ~/.ant/lib. 1. Make sure all .java files in the base directory's subdirectories are compiled and that the corresponding .class files are located in a /bin subdirectory (if your project is compiled by Eclipse, this is the default). 1. run the command ant in the directory containing build.xml. If the build was successful, a directory with the name at2distDDMMYY should have been created. 1. to remove generated files and the distribution, run ant clean.

If you don't want to checkout the atbuild directory in the base directory or its subdirectories have names other than the defaults (for example if you checked out these directories separately under different names, e.g. as Eclipse projects), edit the build.xml file and check the section marked as platform-dependent. Check whether the platform-dependent directories and names correspond to those of your system.

You can get an overview of the different "targets" supported by the ant build file by executing in a shell: ant -p

Using the build file, you can create an ambienttalk2.jar file, provided that you (or Eclipse) have previously compiled all the necessary .java files into .class files already. You can create a distribution by executing ant dist.

You can also create the Javadoc documentation for the language reference by executing ant doc. However, this requires that you have checked out the atdoclet project from the SVN repository, and that you have a 1.4.2-compatible javadoc executable installed.

Releasing a new distribution

This is only required for internal use, external users can ignore this.

Here is a checklist that needs to be followed when creating a new distribution of AmbientTalk:

1. update AmbientTalk's version number in the IAT Shell project's src/edu/vub/at/iat.props file.
2. create a new build: ant dist
3. test whether the source code you're about to release works properly outside of your Eclipse platform. That is, start up the to-be-released iat and execute the AmbientTalk unit tests.
4. upload the newly created and zipped distribution to the Downloads wiki page (uploading to the SOFT server at soft.vub.ac.be:/var/www/html/amop/downloads is no longer required, since the soft downloads page now refers to the googlecode archive).
5. update the AmOP wiki download page.
6. update the change log wiki page.
7. create the documentation: ant doc
8. upload the documentation to the SOFT server (soft.vub.ac.be:/var/www/html/amop/at2langref).
9. update the tutorial if necessary.
10. inform the mailing list of the new build.
11. tag the build in the SVN repository. This can be done by means of the tag.sh shell script provided in the build zip.
12. assign a new version number to iat (via the .props file again), and commit the new .props file to the repository.