This is a live-blog of my experience in the "Intro to Web Tools Platform" tutorial during Eclipse Con 2005.
They say the introduction will be very brief. "Chuck" is doing most of the talking but he doesn't look at ease. Settling in for the lesson... Chuck says to "have at it". Huh?
Have at it? I was expecting more of a presentation. Never done things this way at a conference. Now, I'm not even sure why the intro was necessary. Well, allright then; here we go.
Prerequisites. Hmm... I need Tomcat. No problem; I have it. But wait. It's the wrong version. Chagrin; I should've installed Tomcat. A nice guy had it on a removable USB drive - thanks, Ron. Ron being abused now. Everyone wants to borrow his removable USB drive.
Tomcat installing... Done. That was easy.
The Fun Begins
Decision: Install new Eclipse SDK for this conf or use my existing one? Let's install a clean version...
Darn - this is taking too long. I cancel and delete the partial unzip. I'll just use my existing one.
Extracted 'overlay' zip into M4 to get all necessary jars. So far so good.
Starting Eclipse... Damn! the Perforce plugin can't find the server and it's in an endless dialog loop. Killing the process and removing the P4 plugins. Eclipse starting ok now.
Installing the Tomcat Runtime in Eclipse... had to point M4 to jre 1.4.2 (I had it running with 1.5).
Realize now that I should create a new workspace for Eclipse Con 2005. So, wwitching to a new workspace...
Drat - Java runtime settings are workspace-specific. Point to jre 1.4.2, again. Trying to find Tomcat in "Servers." Servers not there. ? Restarting Eclipse to see if that triggers their appearance. Nope. I admit it now; I need help.
Chuck says, no question about it; I should use the version of the SDK that the tutorial zip provides. I guess I should have followed my first instinct and remained patient for the SDK to unzip.
Starting all over over. Starting Eclipse SDK unzip... CPU is maxed.
I look over at Loren. He's way ahead of me. Perhaps I can learn by proxy now - I probably won't be getting through this in the remaining 30 minutes.
Still extracting the Eclipse SDK... CPU at 100%, which makes it difficult to type. So far now, my only satisfaction has been writing this blog and that is being thwarted.
First Lessons Learned
Loren is done with the tutorial. My CPU still at 100% while it unzips the Eclipse SDK. The contrast is painful and inescapeable. Perhaps I can still leave this tutorial with my ego intact by writing some lessons learned:
- Don't assume that setup time is built into Eclipse Con tutorial schedules.
- From Loren - don't have Tomcat running when you configure Eclipse's Server runtimes. Eclipse should start it up.
Ok, unzipping the SDK is done. Starting up the 'conference' Eclipse version now... CPU at 100% yet again. Recommitting to flying through this as soon as my processor recovers. Maybe I can still get through it. I feel like I'm at the end of a timed test with half of it left to go. Bad memories.
Again; unzipping "WebToolsOverlay", pointing Eclipse to 1.4.2, etc...
Help Needed
Trying to configure "Servers" to find and run Tomcat. "Servers" not found. What the he**? Getting increasingly frustrated. No idea why "Servers" not showing up in my prefs. Waiting. No help to be had. The help-guy is talking about some advanced concept to a guy who doesn't need help. 
I try to exit the newly installed Tomcat in application tray and restart Eclipse... Still no "Servers" config option. This sucks. Lot's of time has passed now. Help-man is now chatting jockingly about recent breakthroughs in astrophysics.
I sit waiting for help, finally realizing that, in haste, I didn't install all the necessary plugins in my 'Conference' Eclipse version. No "Servers" - duh!
Extracting all the .zip libs into my Conference Eclipse version... CPU maxed; I wait, I blog.
Finally on Track
Restarting Conference Eclipse for the last time, I hope. Ok; on my way, finally! Making good progress...
Chuck is talking about "Annotations" and closing out Part 1 of this tutorial now. I guess I'll have to finish this it in my hotel, later.
He's talking about Annotations. Seems cool - is tightly integrated with and uses XDoclet. You can plug in your own XDoclet generators. This could be good for my project at work but not quite sure how right now. Chuck says "Have at it". Huh?
Ah... we're supposed to start Part 2 of the tutorial. I'll try to finish Part 1, first.
Not blogging much (that means I haven't been waiting for help or my CPU to finish).
A Small Victory
Done with Part 1 of the tutorial! With minimal assistance debugging my project name (had a space in it), my web app adds a class to a class schedule, just like it's supposed to. It is nice to create, edit, and deploy this web app. Very nice integration with Tomcat, very nice .jsp editor, and very nice Run as... > Run on Server feature.
I'll digest this all later. Let's quickly get to Part II now. I'm still way behind and I'm sure to slam into the Derby database issues Loren is currently having...
Made it about half-way through before Lawrence stopped us to present Part 3. Was a great overview of the WTP ecosystem. Looks like there's some great WSDL and XSD support but he breezed through it so I missed some of the details. Note to self - play with the XSD and WSDL tools.
I guess I'll work through Part II and III some other time. Everyone is bolting for lunch now and I'm hungry.
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