Limewire building via Eclipse

My perennial lack of time makes this a little less tidy than I'd like...

First off, you need to follow the getting limewire instructions on www.limewire.org. I recommend you also grab the 'tests' module, which has the limewire test suite. Secondly, you need to download and install eclipse from www.eclipse.org.

Now, lets assume you have a directory with the three relevant subdirs: core, gui and tests. In my machine I've renamed those to LimewireCore, LimewireGUI and LimewireTests - the names aren't the critical thing. In eclipse, create a new project, call it LimewireCore, and unclick the 'use default path' checkbox. Instead enter the path to the 'core' directory you have the limewire core source in. Repeat this, asjusting in the same manner, for LimewireGUI and LimewireTests. Use good names for the projects - don't abbreviate the project name to just 'core' - you will regret that later if you do so...

You should now have three projects in the eclipse package package explorer. Ignore all the compiler errors for now. On each project, right mouse click, and enter into the properties.

For the core, you need the following settings: build path - source - exclude 'com/limegroup/tests/**'. build path - libraries - use the add jars button to add everything in lib.

For the GUI project: build path - projects - tick LimewireCore. build path - libraries - use the add jars button to add everything in lib EXCEPT core.jar.

For the Tests project: build path - projects - tick both the Core and GUI projects. build path - libraries - use the add jars button to add everything in lib. If you have a newer junit.jar, you can use the add external jars button to have it referenced instead of the CVS included one.

Finally, we get down to running it: in the Run menu, choose run...

Here, click on Java Application, then click new. Choose limewireGUI for the project, with a main class of RunLime. Ensure the Class path includes the GUI lib/*.jar, limewireGUI project and LimewireCore project.

To run it, simply click on the run or debug icons on the tool bar, and choose whatever you called the configuration.

To run a test from the tests project, left click on it in the package explorer, then click on the run dropdown, and choose 'Run as Junit Test'. Similarly to run junit under the debugger. If you do this on a package, or project, you run all the contained tests - even the whole test suite.

Jens-Uwe Mager suggests "In addition to the fine description above I have found it useful to add
-Dbuild.compiler=org.eclipse.jdt.core.JDTCompilerAdapter
To the arguments field in the ant run dialog if you right click on a build.xml file. This way you can even use the build.xml files to build LimeWire from within eclipse."

I hope this helps you get started with eclipse + limewire hacking.... It's not a hand holding document though, as you can see :}