HOWTO: My (very big) pentaho install and setup tutorial
Like many others, I had a hard time installing and setting up a development environment for pentaho. I still have no idea how to create a simple report in pentaho, but I think I managed to get a good startup point. This were my premises:
- I needed to know how to build a demo solution that connects to an arbitrary database and shows simple pentaho abilities in the least possible time (eg: have a demo set in 2 hours in a client's database)
- I need to switch configuration on the fly so that I can switch from different scenarios (eg: from client A to client B)
- I don't want to change any original files that could get overwritten in a upgrade
- the platform upgrade must be easy to do and not break the rest of the setup
- Debug is a "must have"
- Must support all kinds of different customization in different projects, from using a different databases (I'm using postgresql , thanks elassad) to different security types.
I decided to use not the pre-compiled binaries but the sources from svn, as described here: http://wiki.pentaho.org/display/Pent...o+with+Eclipse
Project pentaho already has a good dev_build.xml ant script, but it wasn't enough for my needs, since I needed to change the svn sources in order to configure a solution. So I built my own structure, and its like this:
pentaho* directories are cheched out from svn, and for me are read-only. Feel free to use any svn client you want; I'm currently in windows but I like to use cygwin, so I use the original client. I checked out the sources with:Code:MyProjectDir |-- build.properties |-- build.xml |-- pentaho |-- pentaho-data |-- pentaho-preconfiguredinstall |-- pentaho-solutions |-- project-client | |-- patches | | |-- pentaho | | `-- target-preconfiguredinstall | `-- solution |-- target-preconfiguredinstall |-- target-solutions `-- updateall-svn.sh
I had to use http:// because I'm under a proxy, guess most of you can use svn:// .Code:$ svn co http://source.pentaho.org/svnroot/pentaho/trunk pentaho $ svn co http://source.pentaho.org/svnroot/pentaho-preconfiguredinstall/trunk pentaho-preconfiguredinstall $ svn co http://source.pentaho.org/svnroot/pentaho-solutions/trunk pentaho-solutions $ svn co http://source.pentaho.org/svnroot/pentaho-data/trunk pentaho-data
target-* directories are the ones generated by the build script. I don't use target-solutions at all (honestly, I'm not sure what this are for, cause they seem a copy of pentaho-solutions. Guess the point is to pick target* and copy it, w/o any other dependencies, to the desired machine).
This leaves us with the "project-client" directory. As I mentioned before, I don't want to write anything under pentaho* directories, so all my changes go to this directory. Here is the structure in more detail:
The idea is very simple: All changes that I would normally do under pentaho* I put them under "patches" directory. My top level ant script just picks them and copies the files to the top level directory. It's recommended to patch pentaho* as least as possible because we are actually overwriting the source files, but the file override.properties is meant to be changed. All other changes are made by patching the final directory, target-preconfiguredinstall.Code:project-client/ |-- patches | |-- pentaho | | `-- override.properties | `-- target-preconfiguredinstall | `-- server | `-- default | |-- conf | | |-- jboss-minimal.xml | | `-- jboss-service.xml | |-- deploy | | |-- PentahoHibernate-ds.xml | | |-- client-ds.xml | | |-- datasource1-ds.xml | | |-- datasource2-ds.xml | | |-- datasource3-ds.xml | | |-- datasource4-ds.xml | | |-- datasource5-ds.xml | | |-- pentaho.war | | | `-- WEB-INF | | | |-- applicationContext-acegi-security-jdbc.xml | | | |-- applicationContext-pentaho-security-jdbc.xml | | | |-- classes | | | | `-- hibernate.cfg.xml | | | |-- jboss-web.xml | | | `-- web.xml | | |-- quartz-ds.xml | | |-- sampledata-ds.xml | | |-- sampledata_admin-ds.xml | | |-- shark-ds.xml | | |-- solution1-ds.xml | | |-- solution2-ds.xml | | |-- solution3-ds.xml | | |-- solution4-ds.xml | | `-- solution5-ds.xml | `-- lib | `-- postgresql-8.2-505.jdbc3.jar `-- solution |-- Portal.properties |-- Portal.url |-- Portal_pt.properties |-- admin .... etc
For my first scenario, those were the files I had to change. I had to change some jboss's config files just because I had to change a port that was unavailable; added my datasource (cliente-ds.xml) and changed the jboss-web.xml and web.xml to register it; changed all other ds's cause I'm using postgresql instead of hsql; added the jdbc lib; changed the security system from memory to jdbc.
This is scalable. Just change files there and they will be copied to the destination target. My ant file does not allow (yet) to remove files from target to destination, but I also don't think thats a relevant issue.
The solution is under project-client/solution, and override.properties points to this dir. For now, I just copied pentaho-solutions to here, and will start from there by adding new solutions and playing a bit.
This is the top level build.xml file. Very simple, indeed:
The build.properties is also a very extensive fileCode:<!-- ====================================================================== description: main build file for pentaho . . ====================================================================== --> <project name="pentaho-build" default="all" > <description>Pentaho BI Platform build helper..</description> <property file="build.properties" /> <target name="init"> <echo>Building project ${project}</echo> </target> <target name="copy-init" depends="init" description="Copy project files"> <!-- apply patches --> <copy todir="." failonerror="true" verbose="true" > <fileset dir="project-${project}/patches/" /> </copy> </target> <target name="dev-setup" description="Compiles and builds the entire project" depends="copy-init" > <ant dir="${pentaho.dir}" antfile="dev_build.xml" target="dev-setup" inheritAll="false"/> </target> <target name="copy-finish" depends="dev-setup" description="Copy target files"> <!-- apply patches - Not sure if I need this --> <!--copy todir="." failonerror="true" verbose="true" > <fileset dir="project-${project}/patches/"/> </copy--> </target> <target name="all" description="Compiles and builds the entire project" depends="copy-finish" /> <!-- Clean targets --> <target name="clean" description="Cleans the solution" depends="init" > <ant dir="${pentaho.dir}" antfile="dev_build.xml" target="clean" inheritAll="false"/> </target> </project>
How to build this? Simple: 'ant clean' to delete all compiled classes and delete target* directories, and 'ant all' to build everything.Code:project = client pentaho.dir = pentaho/
If we had another project in a directory called 'project-anotherclient', all we had to do was to simply change build.properties file and change project entry from client to another client and with a 'ant clean all' we would have a clean solution with totally different configuration
There is an extra file there, called 'updateall-svn.sh'. Its just a simple bash script to update all sources from svn. It will only work on some systems:
At this point, all that was missing was the design studio and knowing how to debug the platform. I'm a netbeans user, so eclipse was totally new for me and I was a bit lost. Since I usually work with tomcat, debugging jboss was also a new area.Code:for i in `ls -d p*`; do cd $i && svn update && cd .. ; done |less
I tried, and tried, and tried once again to build designstudio from sources, but I could not do it. there are 3 projects on the svn root, but failed miserable in all of them. So I went to the precompiled plug in; There is a tutorial here that shows how to use jbossIDE to do the debug jboss, but I found that a bit complicated for 2 reasons: 1 - I could not get designstudio plugin to work in the same eclipse instance as jbosside plugin; 2 - I'm used to do debugging just by attaching a debugger to a socket, so using a >100 Mb plugin just for debugging seemed to me a great overhead. So I opted by *not* using jbosside plugin. This is what I did:
1 - Downloaded and installed (unzipped) eclipse (the version recommended for the design studio plugin, version 3.2.1_M20060921-0945
2 - downloaded design studio pre-compiled plug in and unzipped it to the eclipse directory
3 - copied file pentaho-preconfiguredinstall/bin/run.bat to pentaho-preconfiguredinstall/bin/debug.bat (the same for .sh files in linux/unix), and uncomment the line that says:
4 - run eclipse, added a project named project-client, and a java project (with existing ant script) for pentaho/dev_script.xml.Code:set JAVA_OPTS=-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8787,server=y,suspend=n %JAVA_OPTS%
And that was it. If I want to work on my xactions I just use "project client", if I need to debug jboss I just need to start it with 'debug.(bat|sh)' and attach the eclipse debugger to it (click debug, choose 'debug remote application' and point to the correct host, port 8787 as the above example). Breakpoints will work as magic
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This is my 2 cents in appreciation for the great effort pentaho team puts in this project, and their courage to go for an open-source approach.
Comments and suggestions appreciated. I'm sure the build.xml file can have great improvements. If the admins think its appropriate, feel free to copy-paste this to the wiki.
Now I can finally "start to work" in pentaho. Does anyone know how can I build a simple report?
Thread sponsored by irc channel ##pentaho in freenode
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