Development Environment

Assumptions

This guide assumes you are using a Mac. If you are using Windows or Linux, please reach out to other developers at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/dataverse-dev

Requirements

Java

Dataverse is developed on Java 8.

The use of Oracle’s version of Java is recommended, which can be downloaded from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

The version of OpenJDK available from package managers from common Linux distributions such as Ubuntu and Fedora is probably sufficient for small changes as well as day to day development.

Glassfish

As a Java Enterprise Edition 7 (Java EE 7) application, Dataverse requires an applications server to run.

Glassfish 4.1 is required (not 4.1.1 until https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/2628 is resolved), which can be downloaded from http://glassfish.java.net . If you have downloaded Glassfish as part of a Netbeans bundle, you can manually add the proper version by clicking “Tools”, “Servers”, “Add Server”.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL 9.x is required and can be downloaded from http://postgresql.org

Solr

Dataverse depends on Solr for browsing and search.

Solr 4.6.0 is the only version that has been tested extensively and is recommended in development. Download and configuration instructions can be found below. An upgrade to newer versions of Solr is being tracked at https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/456

curl

A command-line tool called curl ( http://curl.haxx.se ) is required by the setup scripts and it is useful to have curl installed when working on APIs.

jq

A command-line tool called jq ( http://stedolan.github.io/jq/ ) is required by the setup scripts.

If you are already using brew, apt-get, or yum, you can install jq that way. Otherwise, download the binary for your platform from http://stedolan.github.io/jq/ and make sure it is in your $PATH (/usr/bin/jq is fine) and executable with sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/jq.

Recommendations

Mac OS X

The setup of a Dataverse development environment assumes the presence of a Unix shell (i.e. bash) so an operating system with Unix underpinnings such as Mac OS X or Linux is recommended. (The development team at IQSS has standardized Mac OS X.) Windows users are encouraged to install Cygwin.

Netbeans

While developers are welcome to use any editor or IDE they wish, Netbeans 8+ is recommended because it is free of cost, works cross platform, has good support for Java EE projects, and happens to be the IDE that the development team at IQSS has standardized on.

NetBeans can be downloaded from http://netbeans.org. Please make sure that you use an option that contains the Jave EE features when choosing your download bundle. While using the installer you might be prompted about installing JUnit and Glassfish. There is no need to reinstall Glassfish, but it is recommended that you install JUnit.

This guide will assume you are using Netbeans for development.

Additional Tools

Please see also the Tools page, which lists additional tools that very useful but not essential.

Setting up your dev environment

SSH keys

You can use git with passwords over HTTPS, but it’s much nicer to set up SSH keys. https://github.com/settings/ssh is the place to manage the ssh keys GitHub knows about for you. That page also links to a nice howto: https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys

From the terminal, ssh-keygen will create new ssh keys for you:

  • private key: ~/.ssh/id_rsa - It is very important to protect your private key. If someone else acquires it, they can access private repositories on GitHub and make commits as you! Ideally, you’ll store your ssh keys on an encrypted volume and protect your private key with a password when prompted for one by ssh-keygen. See also “Why do passphrases matter” at https://help.github.com/articles/generating-ssh-keys
  • public key: ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub - After you’ve created your ssh keys, add the public key to your GitHub account.

Clone Project from GitHub

Before making commits, please read about our Branching Strategy to make sure you commit to the right branch.

Cloning the Project from Netbeans

From NetBeans, click “Team” then “Remote” then “Clone”. Under “Repository URL”, enter the “ssh clone URL” for your fork (if you do not have push access to the repo under IQSS) or git@github.com:IQSS/dataverse.git (if you do have push access to the repo under IQSS). See also https://netbeans.org/kb/docs/ide/git.html#github

Cloning the Project from the Terminal

If you prefer using git from the command line, you can clone the project from a terminal and later open the project in Netbeans.

If you do not have push access to https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse clone your fork:

git clone git@github.com:[your GitHub user or organization]/dataverse.git

If you do have push access to https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse clone it:

git clone git@github.com:IQSS/dataverse.git

Installing and Running Solr

A Dataverse-specific schema.xml configuration file (described below) is required.

Download solr-4.6.0.tgz from http://archive.apache.org/dist/lucene/solr/4.6.0/solr-4.6.0.tgz to any directory you like but in the example below, we have downloaded the tarball to a directory called “solr” in our home directory. For now we are using the “example” template but we are replacing schema.xml with our own. We will also assume that the clone on the Dataverse repository was retrieved using NetBeans and that it is saved in the path ~/NetBeansProjects.

  • cd ~/solr
  • tar xvfz solr-4.6.0.tgz
  • cd solr-4.6.0/example
  • cp ~/NetBeansProjects/dataverse/conf/solr/4.6.0/schema.xml solr/collection1/conf/schema.xml
  • java -jar start.jar

Please note: If you prefer, once the proper schema.xml file is in place, you can simply double-click “start.jar” rather that running java -jar start.jar from the command line. Figuring out how to stop Solr after double-clicking it is an exercise for the reader.

Once Solr is up and running you should be able to see a “Solr Admin” dashboard at http://localhost:8983/solr

Once some dataverses, datasets, and files have been created and indexed, you can experiment with searches directly from Solr at http://localhost:8983/solr/#/collection1/query and look at the JSON output of searches, such as this wildcard search: http://localhost:8983/solr/collection1/select?q=*%3A*&wt=json&indent=true . You can also get JSON output of static fields Solr knows about: http://localhost:8983/solr/schema/fields

Run installer

Once you install Glassfish and PostgreSQL, you need to configure the environment for the Dataverse app - configure the database connection, set some options, etc. We have a new installer script that should do it all for you. Again, assuming that the clone on the Dataverse repository was retrieved using NetBeans and that it is saved in the path ~/NetBeansProjects:

cd ~/NetBeansProjects/dataverse/scripts/installer

./install

The script will prompt you for some configuration values. It is recommended that you choose “localhost” for your hostname if this is a development environment. For everything else it should be safe to accept the defaults.

The script is a variation of the old installer from DVN 3.x that calls another script that runs asadmin commands. A serious advantage of this approach is that you should now be able to safely run the installer on an already configured system.

All the future changes to the configuration that are Glassfish-specific and can be done through asadmin should now go into scripts/install/glassfish-setup.sh.

Shibboleth

If you are working on anything related to users, please keep in mind that your changes will likely affect Shibboleth users. Rather than setting up Shibboleth on your laptop, developers are advised to simply add a value to their database to enable Shibboleth “dev mode” like this:

curl http://localhost:8080/api/admin/settings/:DebugShibAccountType -X PUT -d RANDOM

For a list of possible values, please “find usages” on the settings key above and look at the enum.

Now when you go to http://localhost:8080/shib.xhtml you should be prompted to create a Shibboleth account.

Rebuilding your dev environment

If you have an old copy of the database and old Solr data and want to start fresh, here are the recommended steps:

  • drop your old database
  • clear out your existing Solr index: scripts/search/clear
  • run the installer script above - it will create the db, deploy the app, populate the db with reference data and run all the scripts that create the domain metadata fields. You no longer need to perform these steps separately.
  • confirm you are using the latest Dataverse-specific Solr schema.xml per the “Installing and Running Solr” section of this guide
  • confirm http://localhost:8080 is up
  • If you want to set some dataset-specific facets, go to the root dataverse (or any dataverse; the selections can be inherited) and click “General Information” and make choices under “Select Facets”. There is a ticket to automate this: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/619