Quick Start for the Starlink JAVA build system
            ==============================================

   Prerequisites
   -------------

First make sure you have a 1.5.x JDK available. Downloads are available
from:

   http://java.sun.com/

At present all development is performed with version 1.5.x as the target
platform, but the system is expected to build and work using 1.6.
Note we cannot distribute the SDK for licensing reasons.

You will also need to have JAI installed as part of the SDK. JAI is the "Java
Advanced Imaging API" which is currently part of SUNs "Desktop Java". The
version of JAI being used can be determined from the README-jai.txt file in
the Starlink JRE package (see the /star/java/jre directory).

Now define STAR_JAVA to point at the "java" command of this:

   setenv STAR_JAVA /some/where/jdk1.x.x/bin/java

Alternatively install the SDK into /star/java.

You do not need to have a Starlink classic system installed, before
you can build the Java tools.  Several of the Java applications use
JNIHDS and JNIAST, which rely on native libraries to do their work.
However the repository contains precompiled binaries of these
libraries, for several platforms (see, for example, jniast/src/lib),
and these are maintained by the appropriate developers.  If you are
not on one of these platforms, you will have to be more creative
(perhaps talk to the stardev mailing list).  SPLAT also uses its own
JNI code, for efficiency, but if there is no classic system available,
it should simply fail quietly, and proceed to access NDFs using the native
code of the JNIHDS library.


   Build ANT
   ---------

Since it's been necessary to add some extension tasks to ANT you need to use
the local release. To do this look in the "ant" directory and follow the
instructions in the "README.Starlink" file.

If you already have a STARJAVA installation you may be able to use the ANT
script found in the /star/starjava/bin directory, but if ANT reports that it
is finding unexpected elements in the build files you will need to rebuild
ANT. Other oddities when rebuilding ANT may be because you are picking up
elements from an existing installation. To avoid this clear out the old
version completely, or install into a different directory.

   Start using the new ANT
   -----------------------

If you have built and installed ANT you now need to add the "java/bin"
directory that you should have created to your PATH (this the directory that
is now equivalent to "/star/bin" and would eventually be "/star/starjava/bin"
if released as part of the current system). You need the new "ant" command to
get our extensions and to use JUnit.

If ANT is not finding the local extensions, it may be reading the
ANT_HOME environment variable indicating another installation.  In this
case the ANT_HOME environment variable should be unset.

   Perform the build
   -----------------

Just type:

   % ant build

in the top-level "source" directory, and wait a while. This recurses into each
of the package subdirectories and performs "ant build" on each package. If it
reports that you cannot compile the Java files, make sure that the SDK is on
your PATH (a javac command is required).

If you have a classic Starlink installation that is not installed in /star,
you will need to re-define the ANT property "stardev". If we assume the new
root is "/star-local", then the simplest way to do this is just to use
-Dstardev=/star-local on the command-line:

   % ant -Dstardev=/star-local

Alternatively, if you expect to do this a lot, define the value in the file
$HOME/.stardev.properties, in which you should put the single line:

   stardev=/star-local

Other ANT properties can be added on additional lines.  In particular,
you might want to set star.dir, which is the location where the Java
applications will be installed; it defaults to the parent of this
directory, but you may wish to redefine it to something like /star-local/java

   Install everything
   ------------------

   % ant install


   Test the installation
   ---------------------

If this all worked you should now be able to type:

   % ../bin/treeview

To use the applications FROG, SPLAT, SoG, TOPCAT and TREEVIEW you need to run
the various scripts found in the sub-directories of ../bin (if you have
STARJAVA already installed check the environment variables and aliases and
re-define these as appropriate).


   Relationship with the classic USSC
   ----------------------------------

If you have the Starlink Software Collection installed on your machine then
STARJAVA should usually be installed into the "starjava" directory of that.
That will have the effect of setting up the STARJAVA commands as part of the
normal initialisations (that is the STARJAVA bin directory will be placed on
the PATH, and various aliases will be established for the commands located in
sub-directories, when you source the "etc/login" and "etc/cshrc" scripts).

To install STARJAVA elsewhere and still make use of the standard
initialisations you will need to build and install the USSC "init" package
(which can also be downloaded from CVS, although normally you would do this as
part of a complete build of the USSC from CVS) and make it using a command
like:

   make STARJAVADIR=/my/starjava

where naturally "/my/starjava" is your STARJAVA installation directory.

Source Code
-----------

The starjava source code repository can be viewed at 

   https://github.com/Starlink/starjava

and checked out of its Git repository by doing

   git clone git://github.com/Starlink/starjava.git

Peter W. Draper 03-NOV-2006 ([email protected])