See Also

The Build Cookbook if you are adding your own code to a binary distribution, or want to make use of module overlays.

Prerequisities

You will need to have Subversion and Maven installed (in addition to Java and the other DSpace prerequisites.)

Check out DSpace from SVN

To check out DSpace, first determine the version of DSpace you want to install.

A few tips on how the DSpace SVN repository is organized / managed:

• /tags/ - Tagged versions represent*stable, official releases* of DSpace software. If you want to install a supported version of DSpace, find the appropriate tag to checkout.
• /branches/ - Branches are used for development of new minor, bug-fix releases (e.g. 1.4.2, 1.5.1). They should be considered semi-stable, but are not recommended unless you plan to help in development work.
• /trunk/ - Trunk is used for development of the next major version (e.g. 1.4, 1.5, 2.0). It should be considered highly unstable, and is not recommended unless you plan to help in development work.

Once you've chosen your version, check it out as follows (the below example is for DSpace 1.5):

svn co https://scm.dspace.org/svn/repo/dspace/tags/dspace-1_5 /some/where

Where "/some/where" is a path on the local file system that may be relative or absolute.
This will check out all of the DSpace modules.

Initial Build and Installation

To build DSpace (with PostgreSQL as the database):

Navigate into the directory called "dspace" within your svn checkout.

 cd /some/where/dspace/

Execute Maven using the following command

 mvn package

Note, one previously had to execute Maven with "assembly:assembly" as an option, this is no longer necessary. Other options for executing maven include designating the database to be used, this can be executed wih the following additional option.

 mvn -Ddb.name=[postgres|oracle] package

This might take a while as required JARs etc are downloaded.

Now you should have a DSpace build in

dspace/target/dspace-1.5-SNAPSHOT.dir

. Set up a PostgreSQL database as usual. Edit dspace/target/dspace-1.5-SNAPSHOT.dir/config/dspace.cfg as required. Run:

 ant fresh_install

You may see errors like this, but these don't matter:

 [java] log4j:ERROR Could not read configuration file [file:config/log4j-console.properties].
 [java] java.io.FileNotFoundException: file:config/log4j-console.properties (No such file or directory)
 [java]     at java.io.FileInputStream.open(Native Method)
 [java]     at java.io.FileInputStream.<init>(FileInputStream.java:106)
 ....

as long as you see BUILD SUCCESSFUL you should be OK.

In your DSpace install directory (by default /dspace), you should see a webapps dir. Copy these to your Tomcat's webapps dir.

Now http://localhost:8080/jspui/ should be the 'classic' DSpace UI. http://localhost:8080/xmlui/ should be the XML UI.

Development

Editing the source is now possible using any tools you like.

Using Eclipse is actually very easy if you're on 3.3 and have Subclipse installed. Just create a Java project, specify 'create project from existing source' and point it at /path/to/src, i.e. the directory with dspace, dspace-api etc. in it. Eclipse picks up the source directories and JARs, and even the SVN source control info. You might like to change Eclipse's build directory and remove duplicates and dspace-*.jar from the JARs in the build path, but as far as source editing with code completion goes you're good.

To deploy your changes (you'll probably want to set up a script to do this!)

 $CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
 cd /path/to/your/src/dspace
 mvn package
 cd target/dspace-1.5-SNAPSHOT.dir
 ant -Dconfig=/dspace/config/dspace.cfg update
 rm -r $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/dspace-*
 cp -r /dspace/webapps/* $CATALINA_HOME/webapps/
 $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh

Warning: the mvn package will overwrite the dspace.cfg in dspace-1.5-SNAPSHOT.dir/config.

Keeping up to date with DSpace SVN

In the top level of your checked out DSpace (i.e. the /path/to/your/src dir) do:

   svn up

You should see messages about what's being updated. If you see 'C' or messages about conflicts by any of the files, you will need to go to the files where there were conflicts and resolve them. See the section entitled "Resolve Conflicts (Merging Others' Changes)" in the SubVersion documentation.

Creating a patch file

NB: Read Code Contribution Guidelines before submitting a patch

To create a patch for all changes, run

 svn diff -u > mypatch.txt

To create a patch for only certain files, run

 svn diff -u path/to/files > mypatch.txt

Applying a patch file

The easiest way to apply a patch is by using the Linux patch command. For information on what the patch command does and all of its options, take a look at man patch from a Linux machine.

TODO: More detail needed

In general, you most likely will want to run a command similar to the following from your [dspace-source] directory (but see the Important Hints below, before running anything!):

   patch -p0 < mypatch.txt

Important Hints:

• It's highly recommended to add the --dry-run option initially, in order to test your command first, since not all patches are created equal!
• The --verbose option is sometimes helpful in understanding what applying the patch is actually doing.