Building Radical

Release version: 0.7.1a - June 23, 2002

Requirements

Everything needed to build Radical is included in the release package except the Java Development Kit (JDK), jEdit (if you want to build the plugin), and Ant; the Radical source code and the Ant build file are included in the src.jar file of the release package. It should be possible to build Radical with versions 1.2.x and 1.3.x of JDK; Radical was developed under JDK 1.3/1.4. The JDK is freely available from Sun Microsystems.

Ant is used as the build tool for Radical; Ant is similar to the traditional MAKE build tool, but is implemented completely in and designed specifically for Java. Ant is freely available as part of the Jakarta Ant project. Radical was built using version 1.4 of Ant. To properly use Ant, add the Ant bin directory to your PATH variable and set your JAVA_HOME and ANT_HOME environment variables to point to the JDK and Ant install directories, respectively.

Using Ant to Build Radical

Ant uses a default build file, called build.xml, when no build file is specified; the Radical package includes a default build.xml file. If Ant is in your PATH then you can simply type "ant" in the Radical install directory after you have extracted src.jar, which will build all of Radical. Building Radical creates numerous directories, but most of them are simply output directories. The important directory is lib, which is where the the core Radical and plugin JAR files are written upon successful compilation.

The default build file can also be used to execute Radical using the current build JAR files by typing "ant run". There are other various targets in the Ant build file, but it is not necessary to execute them individually since Ant only builds what is required each time. The only other important build target is executed by type "ant dist", this creates a new, self-installing Radical distribution JAR file. Important - building Radical will overwrite the installed JAR files, so make a back-up copy of the original Radical installation if you wish to retain it.

For information on using Radical, refer to usage.html. If you have comments or suggestions, feel free to contact me at heavy@ungoverned.org

Richard S. Hall