z2-Environment

h1. First steps with z2

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h2. First steps with the z2-environment

on the previvous page you saw [[How_to_install_z2_v21|How to install a z2 system ]] and start it. Actually this is already enough to run a productive site (of course a productive site would be combined with a web server like Apache).

As the next step you will learn how to do the first development steps using the "Eclipse-IDE":http://www.eclipse.org/ (one of Galileo, Helios, Indigo or Juno is fine).

We recommend to keep the repositories and workspace close together. Change back to the "z2-base" path (@cd ../../..@, if you are still inside the "run/bin" directory) and create a folder called "workspace" - this will be used as the workspace root for Eclipse:

<pre>

   :bin$ cd ../../..

   :z2-base$ mkdir workspace

   :z2-base$ ls -l

   total 0

   0 drwxr-xr-x   2 mr_x  staff   68  7 Sep 16:34 workspace

   0 drwxr-xr-x  12 mr_x  staff  408  7 Sep 15:11 z2-base.core

   :z2-base$

</pre>

Now start Eclipse and choose @.../z2-base/workspace@ as your workspace folder.

The z2-environment provides a Eclipse plug-in called "Eclipsoid" that enables to conveniently develop z2 applications. 

Developing modular software requires that the IDE can resolve the dependencies between the single project. 

So either you import all projects into your workspace or you live with the red x-markers. The third option is that someone

resolves the dependencies for you - this is what the Eclipsoid does. This way you can checkout and focus on one project while

the Eclipsoid plug-in provides the transitive closure of all required prjects and libraries. There are other features that are

explained in more details on the [[Eclipsoid]] wiki pages.

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