RVM : Editing JikesRVM in an IDE

One goal of the JikesRVM project over recent years has been the ability to develop JikesRVM in a development environment such as Eclipse.  This has been possible for the MMTk component since 2005, and as of early 2007 (release 2.9.0) it is possible to work with the majority of the JikesRVM codebase in Eclipse and similar environments.  With Jikes RVM release 2.9.1, setting up your Eclipse environment to work with Jikes RVM became even easier.

Editing JikesRVM in Eclipse

These instructions assume you are working with Jikes RVM version 2.9.1 or later.

  1. Create a JikesRVM source tree either via Mercurial checkout or untar-ing a distribution.
  2. Create the machine-generated files and eclipse metadata:
    • If you have a recent version of Jikes RVM (3.0 onwards):

      $ cd jikesrvm
      $ bin/buildit --eclipse localhost

      Note that if you will not or cannot build on your local machine, substitute localhost for the name of a host you can build on (buildit will perform the build remotely and then copy the requisite files back).
    • If you are working on an older version (2.9.1 - 2.9.3), you can follow this procedure:

      $ cd jikesrvm
      $ ant -Dhost.name=ia32-linux -Dconfig.name=development
      $ ant -Dhost.name=ia32-linux -Dconfig.name=development eclipse-project

      If you will not or cannot build on your local machine:
      1. copy your tree to build build host somehow
      2. perform the above ant tasks
      3. copy the following generated files and directories back to the machine you will edit on:
        • jikesrvm/.project
        • jikesrvm/.classpath
        • jikesrvm/eclipse
  3. Import the newly created Eclipse project into your Eclipse workspace.
    1. From Eclipse, select File-->Import
    2. Select "Existing Projects Into Workspace"
    3. Browse to find the top-level directory.
    4. Select the project (in this case JikesRVM ia32-linux development)
    5. Hit Finish

Editing JikesRVM in NetBeans

  1. Follow the instructions for Eclipse including building the eclipse project with ant
  2. Install the Eclipse project importer
  3. Select File->Import Project->Eclipse Project
    1. Choose to import project ignoring project dependencies
    2. Select the top-level directory you created with the JikesRVM in as the project to import
    3. Select a new folder as the destination (workspace) for the import
    4. Hit Finish

Attachments:

ImportWizard1.jpg (image/jpeg)
ImportWizard2.jpg (image/jpeg)