Setting up Eclipse to manage your Ptolemy II development environment

Eclipse will manage your ptII code tree as a project called the ptII project.

The Ptolemy II source code is available in two formats:

  1. The stable release - download a tar file that is created annually.
  2. The development version - access the Ptolemy group version control system, which uses a tool called Subversion.

The advantage of the tar file is that it is tested and stable.

The advantage of the development version is that it has the latest and greatest changes. However, there could be bugs and instability in the development version. To access the development version, you must either install TortoiseSVN, or Cygwin or install an Eclipse Subversion plug-in. Currently, we prefer a plug-in called "Subversive".

There several ways to set up the ptII project:

  1. Eclipse is unaware of the version control aspects of the project.
    If you are downloading the source from major Ptolemy release, and don't want to update regularly, or you do not have network access, then use this choice.
    (No Eclipse Subversion plug-in (Subversive), No Subversion (svn) from the command line).
  2. Eclipse is unaware of the version control aspects of the project, use the TortoiseSVN version of Subversion or the Cygwin command line version of Subversion to update the tree.
    (No Eclipse Subversion plug-in (Subversive), use Subversion (svn) from the command line).
  3. Eclipse is aware of the Subversion aspects of the project.
    (Use both the Eclipse Subversion plug-in (Subversive) and the shell svn command).
    This choice is the preferred choice for collaborating with the Ptolemy group because it means that your Ptolemy II tree can get recent changes.
    The downside is that that the development tree is under development, so there may be bugs or instability.

Without the Eclipse Subversive plug-in, you'll need to manage the Subversion aspects in the usual way, i.e. with Subversion commands being submitted to a bash shell. With Subversive, Eclipse will do all sorts of things to "help" you. Most of these things are good, but there is a learning curve.

Please choose one of the methods above to set up Eclipse for Ptolemy II.