How to setup an Eclipse IDE for Eclipse BIRT

There is an Oomph project setup model file for Eclipse BIRT. It can be used to automatically provision an Eclipse Installation for the development of Eclipse BIRT.

Step 1

Download the Eclipse Installer

Step 2

Run the installer, and switch to the advanced mode:

Step 3

Choose "Eclipse IDE for Eclipse Committers" as basis for your new IDE, as it already includes all necessary plugins:

Step 4

Now you need to add the setup model for BIRT to the installer. Click on the little green 'plus' in the top right of the installer window. In the little dialog, choose "Github Projects" as catalog and paste the following url into the text field:

https://github.com/Flugtiger/birt/raw/flugtiger_master/EclipseBIRT.setup

Step 5

After clicking 'Next>' you can now select the Eclipse BIRT project to be provisioned in your Eclipse IDE:

Step 6

Having chosen the project to be provisioned, you can alter the variables that are used during the provisioning of the IDE. To see all available variables, click 'Show all variables' on the bottom left of the window. If you have already cloned the birt repository to your local drive, you can set the 'Git clone location rule' variable to the path of the repository on your local drive. This way, the installer does not clone the repository again, but uses the existing one. If you use this setting, please make sure that the repository is up to date, since the installer will redirect your IDE to the setup model file within this repository.

When all variables match your needs, click 'Next>'.

Step 7

The installer will now show you all tasks that are to be executed. Click 'Finish' to start the installation. The installer will now first download all plugins of your new Eclipse IDE and automatically start it afterwards. When your new IDE starts for the first time, it will execute a few remaining tasks of the provisioning process (eg. clone the git repo, import projects, download the target platform, etc.). This is indicated by two rotating arrows in the status line on the bottom edge of Eclipse together with a small progress bar. Give this process some time to finish (it can take up to 15 minutes). To see in detail what task is currently executed, click on the two rotating arrows.

After all tasks have finished, you should have a ready to go Eclipse Installation, with all BIRT projects imported and without any compile errors left. You are now ready to make changes and add new features to BIRT.