Building Oscar

Preliminary release version: 0.3.0 - March 14, 2001

Requirements

Everything needed to build Oscar is included in the release package except the Java Development Kit (JDK) and Ant. It should be possible to build Oscar with versions 1.2.x and 1.3.x of JDK; Oscar was developed under JDK 1.3. JDK is freely available from Sun Microsystems.

Ant is used as the build tool for Oscar; Ant is similar to the traditional MAKE build tool, but is implemented completely in and designed specifically for Java. Ant is freely available as part of the Jakarta Ant project. Oscar was built using version 1.3 of Ant. To properly use Ant, add the Ant bin directory to your PATH variable and set your JAVA_HOME and ANT_HOME environment variables to point to the JDK and Ant install directories, respectively.

Using Ant to Build Oscar

Ant uses a default build file, called build.xml, when no build file is specified; the Oscar package includes a default build.xml file. If Ant is in your PATH then you can simply type "ant" in the Oscar install directory, which will build all of Oscar. Building Oscar creates numerous directories, but most of them are simply temporary output directories. The important directories are:

The default build file can also be used to execute Oscar using the current build JAR files by typing "ant run". There are other various targets in the Ant build file, but it is not necessary to execute them individually since Ant only builds what is required each time. The only other important build target is executed by type "ant dist", this creates a new, self-installing Oscar distribution JAR file. Important - building Oscar will overwrite the installed JAR files, so make a back-up copy of the original Oscar installation if you wish to retain it.

For information on using Oscar, refer to usage.html. If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to contact me at heavy@ungoverned.org

Richard S. Hall