abandoning jbuilder, going to eclipse

With a heavy heart, I am now offficially abandoning JBuilder, and moving to Eclipse.

I will spend the next month playing with Eclipse 3.3 while it is in the final stages prior to release.  I am currently using 3.3m3

The basic problem I had is that the base functionality I need did not work out of the box, and Borland support was not able to help me.  I’m sure that if I paid for a support contract they could have spend the time resolving my issues, but I am not willing to take the gamble and pony up > 1000$ for a product when I am not sure it will meet my needs.

If and when JBuilder quality improves again, I may give it a try again but for the moment, I am sticking with Eclipse.

what is going on here

after reporting my issues connecting to xplanner from jbuilder (adding a task repository) I got an email from codegear support.

The support tech (Chee Wee Chua) told me:

From the main menu, access Window, Preferences, Team, CVS, Proxy Settings.
Set the proxy connection, username and passsword there.

Let me know if this resolves the issue.

Thank you.

hmmm… interesting.
why is Jbuilder using the proxy info from CVS when Eclipse has the proxy configuration in a different area itself?

I sent him back a note:

I do not have CVS enabled, as we use SVN here instead.

Is the mylar code really using this proxy setting instead of the normal proxy settings?:

for normal eclipse it is set under:
window/preferences/internet/proxy settings

Thoughts?

I suspect he does not know what CVS or SVN is 🙂

He responded back with:

Hi Andy,

Normal Eclipse proxy settings doesn’t allow you to enter proxy user and authentication password.
Please let me know if the following resolves your issue.

Thanks.

so I responded:

The normal eclipse proxy screen has the following info:

proxy host
proxy port
non-proxy-hostnames
use socks y/n
enable proxy authentication y/n
proxy username
proxy password

See the attached screenshot for reference

Also, note that our proxy here does not use a username or password.

His response the next day was:

Hi Andy,

I have asked R&D for guidance.

In the meantime, it looks to me like your issue goes beyond simple installation and registration support.
I realize you’re currently using JBuilder 2007 Ent Trial and I would like to note that your issue is not covered under installation and registration support.

Best Regards,

Chua, Chee Wee

I never heard back from him.

so, I gave up on XPlanner.

xplanner issues connecting

When I try and create a task repository using xplanner from the IDE, and enter what I think is a valid url, name and pwd, I get the followin g error msg:

The supplied credentials are invalid

nested exception is:
java.net.SocketException: Connection reset

The only field I do not know what to enter is: “Label:”

The error occurrs whether I have a label or not though, so I don’t think that is it.

Where can I get a better error message to debug what is going on?

project assist stacks

Because of install issues with projectAssist (it would not successfully install bugzilla or xplanner) I manually installed all the components, including:

• Tomcat 5.5.23
• Apache 2.2.4
• Mysql 5.0.37
• Perl 5.8.8.817 (ActiveState)
• Liferay 4.2.1
• Continuum 1.0.3
• Xplanner 0.7b
• Bugzilla 3.0
• Subversion 1.4.3

All of the separate components are working beautifully under Windows 2000.

When I try and run the projectAssist wizard, it detects bugzilla, continuum & xplanner, but does not detect liferay or subversion

It then complains that does not like the fact that I have already installed apache.

Why does it need it’s own apache? I assume it is because it did not find liferay and/or subversion?

I have installed all the stack components, so it should not have any installing to do, just connect to the pre-existing components and configure users and projects etc.

Thoughts?

ProjectAssist Installation Errors (part 4)

Because of install issues with ProjectAssist (it would not successfully install Bugzilla or Xplanner) I manually installed all the components, including:

1. Tomcat 5.5.23
2. Apache 2.2.4
3. Mysql 5.0.37
4. Perl 5.8.8.817 (ActiveState)
5. Liferay 4.2.1
6. Continuum 1.0.3
7. Xplanner 0.7b
8. Bugzilla 3.0
9. Subversion 1.4.3

All of the separate components are working beautifully under Windows 2000.

I have installed all the stack components, so it should not have any installing to do, just connect to the pre-existing components and configure users and projects etc.

When I try and run the ProjectAssist wizard though it detects Bugzilla, Continuum & Xplanner, but does not detect Liferay or subversion.

It then complains that does not like the fact that I have already installed Apache.

Why does it need it’s own Apache?

I assume it is because it did not find Liferay and/or subversion? Liferay runs under tomcat, so it would need Apache, I assume that is the cause. As to why ProjectAssist did not find my installation of Liferay, I can not determine that answer, since the install log does not gave any errors about Liferay. When I installed it, I did so according to the Liferay docs, following their defaults. I can only assume that the way CodeGear configured their version is different and they are expecting it to be installed in a non-default location.

Subversion was also installed in the default location, so it should have been found.

So all my stack components are working after a manual installation, but ProjectAssist itself is still not working.

ProjectAssist Installation Errors (part 3)

Moving along, I decided to try the ProjectAssist install on a different machine, which we will be using for a development server, instead of doing it on my standalone XP workstation. Maybe the installer will work better on this environment.

I did a fresh install of Windows 2000 SP4, and then installed Project Assist, using all the defaults except

1. install dir was c:\dev
2. data dir was c:\dev\data
3. added the smtp url & port.
4. I added a settings.xmp file to .m2 dir to handle the maven proxy access.
5. I added perl’s environment variable to handle the perl proxy access.

When the installer finished, it displayed a list of all errors (shown below). There were lots of them.

Here are the reported errors:

ProjectAssist Installation Errors (part 2)

Having determined the cause of the maven issues, I moved on and cleaned up my system and restarted the install.

I then got perl errors, which the log listed as:

(13:22:49:671) Installing C:\borland\projectassist\Perl\site\lib\Net\LDAP\Extension\WhoAmI.pm
(13:22:49:671) Perl install: processing INSTALL component AppConfig...
(13:22:53:609) Can't call method "ok" on an undefined value at c:/Borland/ProjectAssist/Perl/site/lib/PPM/UI.pm line 881, line 21.
(13:22:53:609) Perl install: ppm command did not succed (exitCode 1):
c:\borland\projectassist\Perl\bin\perl -x -S PPM install c:\borland\projectassist\bugzilla_perl_modules\AppConfig.ppd
(13:22:53:609) Perl install: processing INSTALL component Template-Toolkit...
(13:22:57:218) Can't call method "ok" on an undefined value at c:/Borland/ProjectAssist/Perl/site/lib/PPM/UI.pm line 881, line 17.
(13:22:57:218) Perl install: ppm command did not succed (exitCode 1):
c:\borland\projectassist\Perl\bin\perl -x -S PPM install c:\borland\projectassist\bugzilla_perl_modules\Template-Toolkit.ppd


ProjectAssist Installation Errors (part 1)

After concluding that ProjectAssist does not like “partial installs”, I decided to go with the complete install.

I cleaned up the XP install (removed apache, tomcat, mysql etc and made sure there were no registry entries or services) and fired up ProjectAssist.

Creating a new configuration was pretty straightforward, all I had to change from the defaults was to set my smtp server address.

I pretty quickly got an error at the step where it was configuring maven2. The error I received was:

Warnings and/or errors were posted. Click the "Details" button to see the install log.
Installation failed: Error creating sample project with Maven
java.lang.Exception
com.borland.dsib.r.g.a(Unknown Source)
com.borland.dsib.r.g.d(Unknown Source)
com.borland.dsib.r.g.a(Unknown Source)
com.borland.dsib.r.d.d(Unknown Source)
com.borland.dsib.ub.b(Unknown Source)
com.borland.dsib.ub.h(Unknown Source)
com.borland.dsib.ub.a(Unknown Source)
com.borland.dsib.utilities.m.a(Unknown Source)
com.borland.dsib.utilities.m.access$0(Unknown Source)
com.borland.dsib.utilities.m$1.run(Unknown Source)
java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)

Looking into this error, it seems that Maven needs internet access to update it’s dependencies.

ProjectAssist Administration Notes

In the continuing saga of attempting to get ProjectAssist working, I spent the last week trying to get my “development stack” configured.

I would have to say that at the moment, I am not yet impressed.

The idea behind using Project Assist was:

“ProjectAssist dramatically reduces the time and complexity to create new team and project definitions”

Unfortunately, I have now spent more time debugging the Project Assist installation process than I would have spend just installing the supported projects manually.

Here is what I ran into:

More on ProjectAssist

Much thanks to Joe McGlynn (Director Product Management @ Codegear) for his assistance in getting ProjectAssist up and running for me. Now that I am able to test the functionality, I can see how the server installation goes.

I will post more in a few days when I find out more.