Overview

If you want to setup an Eclipse development environment with the Pentaho Reporting Classic Engine source code, the following instructions will get you started.

NOTE: While the Eclipse IDE is nice and somewhat easy for development on the Pentaho Reporting Classic Engine, it is by no means required to develop on or against the engine.

Install Eclipse with SVN Tools

Make sure you have Eclipse setup and installed and you have installed Subclipse (Subversion tools for Eclipse). If you have not, follow the steps to setup your development environment.

Connect to the SVN Repository

The next step is to connect to the SVN Repository for the Pentaho Reporting project. This repository connection information is:

svn://source.pentaho.org/pentaho-reporting 

is on Source Forge and the JFreeReport project contains CVS connection informationfor the repository.

• Open the SVN Repositories Window (Window Menu ? Show View ? Other ? SVN ? SVN Repository)

• Right click in the SVN Repository window ? New ? Repository Location...
• Fill in the following fields:

• The connection should be established and displayed in the SVN Repository window

Check Out the 0.8.x Branch

Once the connection is established, it is time to check out the latest source code from the 0.8.x branch. The name of the branch is jfreereport release-0_8_7-branch and (while slightly confusing) it contains the latest code for the 0.8.x (a.k.a classic) codeline. This is currently at 0.8.9...

• Open the connection (click on the + next to the connection name) and you will see items titled HEAD, Branches, and Versions
• Navigate down to Branches ? release-0_8_7-branch ? jfreereport release-0_8_7-branch
  • if nothing shows up when clicking on Branches, right click on Branches and select Refresh Branches

• Right-click on this item and select Check Out As...
• Make sure Check out as a project configured using the New Project Wizard is selected (along with Checkout subfolders) and click Next

• Make sure the release-0_8_7-branch is selected and click Finish

• On the New Project dialog, select Java Project and click Next
  
  
• Specify the Project name of jfreereport and select any other required options (defaults are probably good)

• At this point, the project will be created and the files checked out.

Configure the Project for Eclipse

Once the project is checked out, there are some Eclipse specific tasks that need to be done since this isn't an Eclipse project by default.

• On the Navigator or Package Expolrer view, right-click on the jfreereport project and select Properties
• Select the Java Build Path item
• On the Source tab:
  • Highlight the jfreereport item and click the Remove button.
  • Click the Add Folder button, check the jfreereport ? source folder and click OK
  • Set the Default output folder to jfreereport/bin (and uncheck the Allow output folders for source folders option if it is selected)

• On the Libraries tab, click the Add JARs... button
  • Navigate to the jfreereport ? lib directory
  • Highlight all the jar files in that directory
  • Click on the OK button

• Click on the OK button of the Properties dialog
  

At this point, the JFreeReport project should compile and be ready for development.