Local copy of EPIC

amfam81 wrote on Wed Aug 27 16:43:06 MEST 2008:

Hello, 
I am new to EPIC and Eclipse.  My company uses MyEclipse as the IDE for
Java and I plan to add the EPIC plugin to MyEclipse as the IDE Perl. This
means we'd have one IDE for both Perl and Java.

I am wondering if it is possible to download the contents of http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/updates
such that a local copy exists; similar to my own ppm repository.  I'm asking
because I would like to provide a consistent EPIC version to multiple users
at my company regardless of when they install.  By having a local copy I
can assure that user B who will install the software sometime in 2009 is
using the same version installed by other users who installed in 2008. 
This would make my life easier from a support perspective and allow me to
control when we switch versions of EPIC.

Do any of you support multiple (85) users on behalf of your company?  How
do you handle this? 
Thanks in advance,
Paula 

jimbojones2000 wrote on Wed Aug 27 17:13:29 MEST 2008:

Yes, this can be done.

You need to have a webserver location that can serve as your local intranet
update site. Something like http:///e-p-i-c/update

In that update/ directory, you will need three things

1. a site.xml file
2. a features/ directory
3. a plugins/ directory

You can get an old version of these three items as a .zip file from https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=75859&package_id=76346&release_id=530745
THis is the 0.6.13 version of E-P-I-C and the latest is 0.6.24 (I think),
so you will have to update the jar files in plugins/ and features/ to the
latest jar files.

Then you will have to modify the text in the site.xml file to point to the
new feature jar file and the description text.

Usually, you should be able to browse the update site directly (http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/updates/testing)
to get the latest files, but with the new redesign of the epic-ide.org site,
that link is redirected to http://www.epic-ide.org/updates/testing/index.php,
which unfortunately does not exist. However, if you do an install/update
in your local install of Eclipse, you can then copy out the latest jar files
under features/ and plugins/ to your local update site.

hope this helps, Jim

ps. Are you at American Family Ins? I did some work there a few years back
with the SCM team.

jploski wrote on Wed Aug 27 19:36:33 MEST 2008:

> with the new redesign of the epic-ide.org site, that link
> is redirected to http://www.epic-ide.org/updates/testing/index.php,
> which unfortunately does not exist.

I just fixed the redirect to allow directory listings, so that http://www.epic-ide.org/updates/testing/
works as before the move.

amfam81 wrote on Wed Aug 27 21:46:05 MEST 2008:

Thanks Jan!  I can have my pick of versions now! Do you have any recommendations
as to which to deploy within my organization? (Max 85 users, most likely
40)
Paula  

amfam81 wrote on Wed Aug 27 18:30:22 MEST 2008:

Hi Jim, 

Thanks for the information.  Seems straight forward enough however, the
plugin version I initially installed/tested is 0.5.46.  http://www.epic-ide.org/download.php
indicates:
http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/updates for the stable 0.5.x, older version of EPIC

http://e-p-i-c.sf.net/updates/testing for the most recent 0.6.x version


As you stated, the download site only contains 0.6.13.  I'd rather use the
older stable version but I can't find a download for it.  Any ideas on how
I can get one for the older version?  Can I build an update site based on
what I currently have installed?  I can't find all the jars within the MyEclipse
directories.  The 0.6.13 zip file contains 7 jars and I can only find 3
of those for the 0.5.46 version. :-(

Yes, I am with American Family Ins; I work in BT Software Engineering supporting
development tools.
Paula

jimbojones2000 wrote on Wed Aug 27 19:12:50 MEST 2008:

Hi Paula

I think you can get it from CVS, as Jochen said

Something like 
 
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@e-p-i-c.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/e-p-i-c login
 
 
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@e-p-i-c.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/e-p-i-c
co -P org.epic.website/htdocs/updates

... should give you the old version ("non-testing"). Looking at the site.xml,
it is for the 0.5.46 feature.jar file

However, the testing version 0.6.24 is really, really sweet and I recommend
you update ASAP.

Regards, Jim

ps. I contracted for Alan Pauls for a while at AmFam 
 

amfam81 wrote on Wed Aug 27 21:41:26 MEST 2008:

Regarding:
>>However, the testing version 0.6.24 is really, really sweet and I recommend
you update ASAP.

I'm showing my naivete' here....is there a narrative of what has changed
from version to version?  I guess I'm wondering what it is that makes the
testing version better.  

I'm also wondering if I'm being too cautious in thinking I should deploy
only a "stable" version.  Does that mean no new changes that it has been
stablized??  I looked at some of the bug reports and unless I'm missing
something I can't tell which version they relate to.



 

jploski wrote on Wed Aug 27 22:00:53 MEST 2008:

The general rule is that bug fixes go into stable and new features and bug
fixes go into testing. There is a single ChangeLog file (at http://www.epic-ide.org/updates/testing/ChangeLog),
which tracks 'testing'.

The reason why I'd also recommend 'testing' is that it has diverged from
'stable' quite significantly over time, in a positive way. In particular,
the 'testing' version has a much updated debugger frontend. So I've only
applied bug fixes related to debugging to 'testing' for a good while.

At some point the current 'testing' version will be declared 'stable', particularly
after a period of development inactivity without alarming bug reports (in
fact, now would be a good time). Note also that in case of EPIC, using 'testing'
does not pose a big risk for the following reasons:
- not much actual new development takes place (regrettably)
- you can always downgrade easily if a bug in the very latest version of
'testing' happens to bite you

amfam81 wrote on Wed Aug 27 22:11:21 MEST 2008:

Thanks!  I'll use the current testing version; the debugger is viewed as
a key feature to my users. 

luelljoc wrote on Wed Aug 27 18:31:11 MEST 2008:

Hi Paula,

the EPIC website is also in CVS.
Something like

    cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@e-p-i-c.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/e-p-i-c
login 

    cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@e-p-i-c.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/e-p-i-c
co -P  org.epic.website/htdocs/updates/testing


should download the update testing site.

Bye
Jochen

jploski wrote on Wed Aug 27 19:41:02 MEST 2008:

Correct. Actually, while the update site was on sf.net, I just used "cvs
update" on the shell account to bring it public. Now with epic-ide.org,
I have to use FTP, but I will keep checking in the update sites nevertheless.