Getting Started

This project uses a Git submodule to pull in the Ion test data suite. You must either clone this project via git clone --recursive or update the submodule afterwards via git submodule update --init. If you don't do this, the unit tests will fail (obscurely, when run through Maven).

Installing Eclipse

Regardless of whether you use the Oomph installer or the full download, you want to install the "Eclipse DSL Tools" product. This includes the Plug-in Development Tools (PDT) and Xtext features used by this project. The code requires Xtext 2.10; that comes standard with Neon but if you're using Mars you'll need to update those components.

When you import this project into your Eclipse workbench, be sure to enable the Search for nested projects option. Otherwise you'll only get the parent project, which only coordinates the build process, and not the numerous subprojects that contain the actual plugin code.

Building in Eclipse

Most of the plug-in's code is generated by Xtext. When you first open the project, you'll need to generate this code manually.

• Go to Preferences | Plug-in Development | Target Platform and select software.amazon.ionxtext.target.
• From the software.amazon.ionxtext subproject (not the parent project), browse to src/software/amazon/ionxtext. Select GenerateIon.mwe2 and Run As | MWE2 Workflow.
• You'll probably get an error indicating that problems exist in the project, but that's because you've not yet generated necessary code, so proceed.
• You may need to clean all projects to eliminate errors.

You'll also need to do this when you modify various core resources such as the grammar definition file Ion.xtext.

Dependency Problems?

If Eclipse is unable to resolve required plugin bundles, you may have a mangled target platform definition. Go to Preferences | Plug-in Development | Target Platform, select software.amazon.ionxtext.target, and Reload.

If the problem is with classes in software.amazon.ion (i.e., the ion-java library), then you've probably not built this project from Maven. That's needed in order to copy POM-first dependencies from the Maven repository into a local pom-first-plugins directory that's linked into the target platform.

Developing in Eclipse

Running the Tests

• Right-click on the ionxtext.tests project and Run As | JUnit Test.
• Recommended to mark the resulting Run Configuration as a favorite for easy access at all times.

Do you see Could not initialize class software.amazon.ionxtext.tests.UnitTestUtils? It's probably failing to find the iontests content, which means you forgot to git submodule init.

Running in a child Eclipse instance

• Right-click on the ionxtext project and Run As | Eclipse Application.