By Ryan Brown
This section describes how to build the REA-ROBOT application.
In order to build REA-ROBOT, you need the following pre-requisites:
-
Java SDK (at least 1.5)
-
Archive Utility of your choice that supports .tar.gz file formats
Once you have installed the pre-requisites, the next step is to extract the rea-robot package using your choice of archive utility. For example, to extract this using the command line tar command:
> tar -xvzf RYAN_BROWN.tar.gz
Open a command prompt window and change to the directory where you extracted the rea-robot package. From there, use Maven 3 to build the REA-ROBOT application (NOTE: If this is the first time you are build REA-ROBOT, be sure to have a working internet connection in order to allow Maven 3 to download the dependencies) using the command:
> mvn clean assembly:assembly
After building, the REA-ROBOT executable jar can be found in the resulting “target” directory (Note: For the sake of portability, a redistributable copy can also be found as a packaged zip archive in the “target/dist” directory). From the target directory, issuing a simple java command will launch REA-ROBOT:
> java -jar rea-robot-1.0.jar
REA-ROBOT runs commands passed in from the standard input, so there are two simple ways to issue commands to the REA-ROBOT:
- Run using the command above and issuing commands directly from there. For example:
> java -jar rea-robot-1.0.jar
> PLACE 1,2,EAST MOVE MOVE LEFT MOVE REPORT
> 3,3,NORTH
- Run using a pre-defined file and redirecting it into the standard out
> java -jar rea-robot-1.0.jar < path/to/command_file
In order to make this simple, I have also provided a number of simple example command files. These can be run using the following commands:
Moves the robot in a spiral
> java -jar rea-robot-1.0.jar < spiral.path
Moves the robot diagonally from the bottom left (0,0) to the top right (5,5)
> java -jar rea-robot-1.0.jar < diagonal.path
Moves the robot in an X, starting from the top left (0,5) to the bottom right (5,0). Then starting again from top right (5,5) down to the bottom left (0,0).
> java -jar rea-robot-1.0.jar < xmarksTheSpot.path
For the sake of debugging, the rea robot application will write to a debug log file named robot.log within the execution directory. This file contains timestamped entries of actions, errors and warnings experienced through regular execution.