Java Development: Setting-up the Development Project

The Java xLib DevKit

contains the necessary structure to develop an xUML library (xLib) with Java
provides means to configure access to your PAS system and development resources
offers configurations for Git as a version control system
comes with prepared gradle tasks to build your project.

Download the Java xLib DevKit here.

Simply copy the DevKit as a starting point.

If you are using IntelliJ^© of JetBrains as a development environment, you can also configure the Java xLib DevKit as a template to create new Java projects swiftly and easily.
See Save projects as templates in the IntelliJ documentation for more.

Creating a New Project

Create a new Java project from the Java xLib DevKit.

Step 1: Naming

The name of the Java project will be set as the name of the generated library. This name is generated to settings.gradle, setting rootProject.name. You can change it there if you ever need to.

Step 2: gradle

The DevKit contains gradle and some prepared gradle build scripts for you to build your library. If your IDE asks you whether to load the gradle project, confirm this like on the example from IntelliJ below:

Refer to Java Development: Build Tasks for more information on the gradle build.

Step 3: README

In the new project, the README file is displayed. It contains some hints on how to start with the DevKit, and points to this documentation resources.

Step 4: Project Settings

Java Settings

For the provided setup to work, gradle has to be run with Java 11, but the jar files generated have to be Java 8 compatible. This means you need to apply the following settings to your development environment:

Java SDK needs to be set to a Java 11 SDK.
Language level should be set to version 8.

Build Settings

You can use a local.properties file to configure your project settings. The project contains a template file for that (_local.properties) that you can simply copy.

As this file also contains user specific data, it is excluded from version control (.gitignore) and will not be checked-in to Git.

Use this file to override the settings from gradle.properties. Refer to Java Development: Build Tasks for a detailed description of all settings.

Library Name

The library name is defined in the gradle settings in settings.gradle, setting rootProject.name. You can change it there if you ever need to.