Building Orbeon Forms
Last updated
Last updated
This page explains how to build Orbeon Forms.
Please note that the build system has changed over time. Building a full distribution with ant orbeon-dist has remained a constant though.
If something is broken, please !
You need to have already installed:
or
( still works as of 2018-10-01 but is deprecated)
Java 11 or newer
On macOS, you can install the following easily if you have :
If you encounter any problem with Node.js and/or Uglify, try using an older version of Node.js, e.g. nvm use 18 or nvm use 20.
where ~/my/projects is an existing directory on your system where you want to place the Orbeon Forms source code.
This clones the git repository into a child directory called orbeon-forms.
NOTE: There is no guarantee that the master branch is stable, as it contains some of the latest changes to Orbeon Forms!
You don't have to use the following, but in case you care, the Orbeon Forms developers use:
the latest version of MacOS (Monterey as of 2022)
the latest version of IntelliJ IDEA (2022.2 as of 2022-08) and the Scala plugin
This means that until that is addressed, or until we move to another host for packages, a GitHub token is needed to build Orbeon Forms.
If you have a GitHub account:
Export that token before launching sbt:
This can also be stored in your shell profile file.
If you don't have a GitHub account, either create one or ask us for a token.
To build files for development:
sbt: launch sbt
project /: this is the default (with older versions of sbt: project root)
package: compile Scala, Java and assets, create JARs, and create the exploded WAR
The exploded WAR is available under:
To run all the tests:
sbt: launch sbt
project /: this is the default (with older versions of sbt: project root)
Test/test: run unit tests (with older versions of sbt: test:test)
Db/test: run database tests (with older versions of sbt: db:test)
To create a distribution:
ant orbeon-dist
You need:
the Scala plugin for Scala source code support
Currently, compiling and packaging is done via sbt and not from IntelliJ. You use IntelliJ for:
editing
debugging
To open the Orbeon Forms project:
Go to the "File" → "Open Project" menu and select the orbeon-forms directory.
IntelliJ then indexes the project, which can take a minute the first time you do it.
Open the "sbt" tab which should appear on the right side of IntelliJ.
If this doesn't show, search for "sbt" in the list of commands (Ctrl-Shift-A).
Do "Refresh all sbt projects".
Open build.sbt and click "Refresh" to let IntelliJ create modules based on the sbt build.
Create a new context in Tomcat's conf/server.xml:
Tomcat has a file called bin/setenv.sh where you can set environment variables. In it, set the JAVA_OPTS for Tomcat. Create the file if it doesn't exist yet. For Java 11:
NOTE: You don't have to set -verbosegc -XX:+PrintGCDetails if you are not interested in garbage collector output.
NOTE: The -Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true can help in some cases.
NOTE: Older options for Java 8 included: -XX:MaxPermSize=256m , -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps.
Finally, you can start Tomcat with:
And test by going to:
http://localhost:8080/orbeon/
This will show the Orbeon Forms landing page.
The settings above start Tomcat in debug mode. This means that you can debug the Java and Scala code from IntelliJ. Select the "Tomcat" configuration in IntelliJ, then "Run" → "Debug". IntelliJ opens the debugging window and connects to Tomcat. You can then set breakpoints and do the usual things one does with a debugger!
Alternatively, for running without debugging enabled, set instead:
If you modify Java or Scala files, you need to recompile. You do this from the command-line with sbt, which can let run the compile task incrementally with:
TODO: document making changes to resources or assets.
The following runs only tests within FormBuilderFunctionsTest which contain the string my test and show full stack traces in case of exception:
Orbeon does not provide public instructions or code to build Orbeon Forms PE, which is a commercial, supported build of the product. If you are a PE customer, contact Orbeon at info@orbeon.com.
The idea is just that we want to ensure that something called "Orbeon Forms PE" in fact comes from Orbeon.
As of 2016-06-02:
To compile the Scala and Java files from the command-line the first time, run:
ant orbeon-war
To incrementally compile Scala and Java files during further development, run:
sbt
project root
one of
~copyJarToExplodedWar: to only update server-side classes
~fastOptJSToExplodedWar: to only update the Form Builder Scala.js artifacts
~ ;copyJarToExplodedWar;fastOptJSToExplodedWar: to update both
The copyJarToExplodedWar command in the root project incrementally:
builds all the sub-projects depended by root
orbeon-common
orbeon-dom
orbeon-form-builder-shared (empty currently on master)
orbeon-xupdate
orbeon-core
orbeon-form-runner
orbeon-form-builder
orbeon-form-builder-client
copies the following resulting JAR files to build/orbeon-war/WEB-INF/lib
orbeon-common.jar
orbeon-dom.jar
orbeon-form-builder-shared.jar
orbeon-xupdate.jar
orbeon-core.jar
orbeon-form-runner.jar
orbeon-form-builder.jar
To run tests from IntelliJ:
from sbt, first run test:compile
run "Unit Tests" from IntelliJ
there are issues, with the following tests failing:
formRunnerStaticCache
"Some(false) did not equal None"
formRunnerItemsetActions
"None.get"
ResourcesPatcherTest.testResourcesConsistency
"Cannot find resource: /apps/fr/i18n/resources.xml"
MemoryCacheTest
tries to connect to Selenium?
"Form Runner and Form Builder - Oracle view column names"
"Cannot find resource: /apps/fr/persistence/relational/sql-utils.xsl"
VersionTest because the version used is "2016.2-SNAPSHOT"
NOTES:
compiling from IntelliJ doesn't work properly yet: files compile, but won't be copied to the exploded WAR
You need to have already installed:
Java 1.7
With IntelliJ, you need the following plugins, which you can download and enable from IntelliJ directly:
Scala: to compile Scala source code
File Watchers: to compile .less files to CSS (if you make changes to those)
To open Orbeon Forms in IntelliJ:
Go to the "File" → "Open Project" menu and select the orbeon-forms directory.
IntelliJ then indexes the project, which can take a minute the first time you do it.
Go to the "Build" → "Make Project" (this takes about 1 mn 10 seconds on a recent laptop).
Go to the "Ant Build" pane and run the orbeon-war target.
Manually create the directory orbeon-forms/src/resources-local if it is missing.
This builds Orbeon Forms in development mode, where the Java/Scala class files are not placed into JARs. This way you can quickly recompile incrementally.
In this mode, running the orbeon-war ant target skips compilation but processes resources and creates an "exploded" WAR file which Tomcat can point to.
Create a new context in Tomcat's server.xml:
Then set JAVA_OPTS for Tomcat:
NOTE: You don't have to set -verbosegc -XX:+PrintGCDateStamps -XX:+PrintGCTimeStamps -XX:+PrintGCDetails if you are not interested in garbage collector output.
Finally, you can start Tomcat with:
And test by going to:
http://localhost:8080/orbeon/
This will show the Orbeon Forms landing page.
Alternatively, for running with the YourKit profiler, you need to set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH and use a different JAVA_OPTS variable:
Note that the debugging and profiling settings above are different: you either run in debug mode, or in profiling mode.
If you modify Java or Scala files, you need to recompile. Go to menu "Build" → "Make Module 'Orbeon Forms'", or use the keyboard shortcut (F7).
NOTE: HotSwap has limitations, especially with Scala code which produces and modifies more class files. It is not a silver bullet and there will be cases where you will need to redeploy the web application or restart the application server. But you will spare yourself a redeployment or restart in the cases where your modification to the Java or Scala code does not significantly change the structure of classes.
If you modify resource files, re-run the ant orbeon-war target from IntelliJ.
If you make changes to .less files and want those recompiled automatically, you need the "File Watchers" IntelliJ plugin, as well as the less compiler. You can install it with:
This installs the less compiler to /usr/local/bin/lessc, which is where the included IntelliJ "File Watchers" configuration points to. If it's in a different location, you'll need to adjust the path.
Select the "Unit Tests" configuration in IntelliJ, and run it. This should take about a minute.
IntelliJ then shows : "Done: 723 of 731 Failed: 8"
The tests that fail are the following:
CombinedClientTest: this requires Selenium to be setup.
DDLTest and RestApiTest: these require a database setup.
We hope to provide instructions to run these in the future.
You can then run, from the orbeon-forms directory:
A related known issue, from the command-line, is that running ant classes twice in a row fails with errors. You must remove classes under build/classes before running ant classes again.
NOTE: With ant, class files are produced under build/classes, but with IntelliJ they are produced under build/orbeon-war/WEB-INF/classes. You should be aware of this is you switch between building from IntelliJ and building with ant.
WARNING: ant clean deletes everything under the build directory. This includes the data for the embedded eXist database. If you have some test data, including form definitions and data in there, backup build/orbeon-war/WEB-INF/exist-data first!
run ant clean
run ant orbeon-dist-war to build the WAR files
Alternatively:
run ant teamcity-release to clean, test, and build the entire release
If you have never obtained the Orbeon Forms source code, you need to get it . To get the latest code from the master branch, run the following command line:
Starting with Orbeon Forms 2021.1, some packages are hosted by . Unfortunately, as of May 2022, there is no way to enable downloading these packages fully anonymously via tools like Maven or sbt. There is a now .
Create a with the Read Packages ability
Most of the build is now done with .
[SINCE 2015-08]
14 (previous versions may or may not work)
On macOS, you can install git and sbt easily if you have :
If you are connected to Tomcat via the debugger AND you are lucky, changed classes will reload in the JVM via HotSwap. See also the IntelliJ doc on . Otherwise, you need to restart Tomcat to see your changes.
From the command line, you need installed. Building should work with ant 1.8.x or 1.9.x.
Currently, there is no incremental compilation when running from the command line. We hope to move to in the future, see . Because of this, Orbeon developers tend to build from IntelliJ, and build with ant on continuous integration build servers only.
