Introduction

This guide shows the core functionality of ACE, organizing bundles and other artifacts into logical features and distributions and associating those with specific targets, all done using a convenient web interface.

Using Apache ACE

The following steps can be followed to get started:

  1. First we need to actually checkout and build ACE. Follow the link to get more information on how to do that.
  2. Once ACE is built, we can start the server with integrated Web UI. Go to ace-target-devserver/target/org.apache.ace.target.devserver-*-distribution/ace-devserver. Start it using the run.sh or run.bat file.
  3. Now the server is started, let's connect to it. Launch a browser and point it to: http://localhost:8080/ace/ You should now be greeted with a login prompt. Log in with user "d" password "f" and you should see a view with 4 empty columns and some buttons at the top of the screen.
  4. Click on 'Retrieve' to get the initial version of the repository. It will look as if nothing's happened, but you have now in fact retrieved the first, empty version of the repository and can start manipulating it. Once you're happy with it, you can commit it back (which we'll do a bit later).
  5. Upload some sample bundles into the artifacts column by first clicking the 'Add Artifact...' button. In the dialog that appears, you can upload a bundle using the 'Upload' button in the middle of the window. You can perform this step multiple times if you want to upload more than one bundle. Finally, hit the 'Add' button to add all uploaded artifacts to ACE.
  6. Create a feature by clicking on the 'Add Feature...' button. Features are the first level of logical grouping for artifacts.
  7. Create a distribution by clicking on the 'Add Distribution...' button. Distributions are another level of logical grouping: you group features into distributions.
  8. Drag an artifact onto a feature to create an association between the two. By repeating this process you can associate all relevant artifacts to features.
  9. Drag a feature onto a distribution and again repeat this process until you've associated all your features with their relevant distributions.
  10. Now we need a target to actually deploy our artifacts to. To start a target, go to ace-launcher/target and start it using java -jar org.apache.ace.launcher*.jar.
  11. After a few seconds, the target should show up in the Web UI. To associate it with a distribution, drag that distribution onto the target.
  12. Click on 'Store' to actually store changes on the server, which should trigger the actual deployment of the artifacts to the target.

Debugging

You can hook up a standard remote debugger to either target. To do that, edit the run.sh (or run.bat) script and include the following extra parameter for Pax Runner:

--vmOptions="-Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=8000,server=y,suspend=y"

Now run the target, and start the debugger of your favorite IDE.

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