custom-tools not working

[hohwille]

Expected behavior

As a IDEasy user, I want to be able to define custom tools that are installed automatically so that I can roll our custom software to my team.

Actual behavior

This feature was claimed to be implemented but never tested and it is fundamentally broken.

1. ide create «projectname» «settings-url» is not setting up any custom tool at all
2. ide update later tries to do it but fails:

Start: Install java1.8
Installation of java1.8 failed!
com.devonfw.tools.ide.cli.CliException: Version 8u292b10 for tool java1.8 does not exist in edition java1.8.
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.url.model.UrlMetadata.getVersionFolder(UrlMetadata.java:137)
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.repo.DefaultToolRepository.resolveVersion(DefaultToolRepository.java:43)
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.tool.LocalToolCommandlet.installTool(LocalToolCommandlet.java:198)
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.tool.LocalToolCommandlet.installTool(LocalToolCommandlet.java:181)
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.tool.LocalToolCommandlet.installTool(LocalToolCommandlet.java:166)
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.tool.LocalToolCommandlet.install(LocalToolCommandlet.java:79)
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.tool.ToolCommandlet.install(ToolCommandlet.java:223)
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.commandlet.AbstractUpdateCommandlet.updateSoftware(AbstractUpdateCommandlet.java:175)
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.commandlet.AbstractUpdateCommandlet.run(AbstractUpdateCommandlet.java:55)
        at com.devonfw.tools.ide.commandlet.UpdateCommandlet.run(UpdateCommandlet.java:29)

Please note that here java1.8 was defined as a custom tool. We could solve this in other ways with IDEasy to have an additional java version installed but this is not what this issue is about. The problem is that custom tool installation is generally broken and seems to never have worked.

Steps to reproduce (bug) / Use Case of feature request (enhancement)

1. fork ide-settings
2. add ide-custom-tools.json file and push changes to your fork
3. create a project from that fork (ide create test-project «myforked-settings-url»)
4. observe that nothing happened regarding custom tools at all (see 1. in actual behaviour)
5. run ide update inside test-project
6. observe the error above (see 2.)

Related/Dependent Issues

• Implement ability to setup IDE instance #101 (ide create)
• Implement ability to update IDE instance #102 (ide update)
• Implement CustomToolRepositoryTest #756 (test for custom tools)

Comments/Hints:

This is the implementation that looks reasonable:

IDEasy/cli/src/main/java/com/devonfw/tools/ide/commandlet/AbstractUpdateCommandlet.java

Lines 167 to 178 in 8e971e1

	for (CustomTool customTool : this.context.getCustomToolRepository().getTools()) {
	CustomToolCommandlet customToolCommandlet = new CustomToolCommandlet(this.context, customTool);
	toolCommandlets.add(customToolCommandlet);
	}
	// update/install the toolCommandlets
	for (ToolCommandlet toolCommandlet : toolCommandlets) {
	try {
	toolCommandlet.install(false);
	} catch (Exception e) {
	step.error(e, "Installation of {} failed!", toolCommandlet.getName());
	}

Why does it not work?

Affected version:

• 2024.12.002-beta

[hohwille]

Why does it not work?

IMHO customToolRepository is only initialized in constructor of IdeContext:

IDEasy/cli/src/main/java/com/devonfw/tools/ide/context/AbstractIdeContext.java

Line 262 in 8e971e1

this.customToolRepository = CustomToolRepositoryImpl.of(this);

But it is not updated on IdeContext.reload()

IDEasy/cli/src/main/java/com/devonfw/tools/ide/context/AbstractIdeContext.java

Lines 1123 to 1125 in 8e971e1

	public void reload() {
	this.variables = null;
	}

See also:

IDEasy/cli/src/main/java/com/devonfw/tools/ide/commandlet/AbstractUpdateCommandlet.java

Line 61 in 8e971e1

((AbstractIdeContext) this.context).reload();

So part 1. of this issue is easy to fix by just recreating the customToolRepository just like in the constructor (or better as we do with other things just set it to null and leave it unitialized in constructor and do lazy init in getter.

[hohwille]

Also also figured out the reason for bug part 2.:
The CustomToolCommandlet is implemented incorrectly and does not override install methods.
Therefore it passes the DefaultToolRepository instead of the CustomToolRepository to the installTool method.

[hohwille]

Another thing to consider (but maybe off-topic for this bug issue):
How, could I manually do something on a custom tool?
A valid usecase would be to uninstall the custom tool.
Shoudn't ide uninstall «custom-tool-name» work or ide uninstall custom «custom-tool-name» (latter consideration since the «custom-tool-name» is just a string and it would be tricky to create a ToolCommandlet from that String in the propery parse method)?