Building the GUI

Wiki > The GUI > Getting started > Building the GUI

Before building and running the GUI please make sure you have followed the steps from here: First time installing and building (Windows). In particular make sure Git and genie_python are installed.

Eclipse RCP resources

We have a book which should serve as a reasonable introduction to the Eclipse RCP platform: 'Eclipse Rich Client Platform' by McAffer, Lemieux and Aniszczyk. There is also a basic introduction at http://www.vogella.com/tutorials/EclipseRCP/article.html.

Checking out the GUI

Create a directory for where you want your IBEX GUI to reside (e.g. C:\Instrument\Dev). From an appropriate Git console (e.g. Git Bash) navigate to your directory and run:

git clone https://github.com/ISISComputingGroup/ibex_gui.git

Building via Eclipse

Eclipse IBEX Developer's Edition

If you are working on the IBEX GUI please use the IBEX Eclipse editor, which is available, within ISIS, via a zip file at \\isis\inst$\Kits$\CompGroup\ICP\Developer Tools, simply unzip the the file to your chosen location for Eclipse and use the provided workspace. You can choose to download Eclipse directly from ​http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/packages/eclipse-rcp-and-rap-developers/mars1, but you will need to alter settings to get the correct defaults for formatting.

Building

These are the steps needed to run the GUI via Eclipse:

1. Start Eclipse IDE and select the workspace and use "Browse" to create and select a new workspace folder (example name: ibex_workspace)
2. From the menu bar choose: File->Import->General->Existing Projects into Workspace. Choose "Select root directory" and browse to where the IBEX code was cloned to, Eclipse should automatically select everything so click "Finish" to add them to the project
3. Expand the target platform folder (labelled as uk.ac.stfc.isis.ibex.targetplatform), double click on the target file and choose "Set as Target Platform". This may take some time as parts of CS-Studio and DAWN are downloaded. It may also be required to update the Locations in use should some packages appear to be missing.
4. To run the application from within Eclipse: open "ibex.product" from the uk.ac.stfc.isis.ibex.client.product folder, select "Launch an Eclipse application"

Important Note: you will need JDK 1.8 or higher installed to launch the IBEX GUI succesfully. You may be able to use JDK 1.7, but you wil need to change the JDK compliance level in Eclipse from 1.8 -> 1.7, else the GUI will not launch.

If you see a “Plugin execution not covered by lifecycle configuration” error, you will need to go into eclipse preferences and ignore this category of error.

Building via Maven

1. From the command line, navigate to the build directory in the IBEX code
2. Run the build.bat file
3. Wait for a few minutes while it builds
4. After the build finishes it can be found in \base\uk.ac.stfc.isis.ibex.client.product\target\products\

Troubleshooting

If the GUI loads up but items are the wrong size, you may need to change your display settings. The exact settings that you need may vary from computer to computer. This is a common issue on Windows 10 machines due to the OS' scaling setting for text, icons etc. that is meant to ensure they do not look too small on high screen resolutions.

Generally a resolution of 1920 x 1080 with a scaling factor of 100% should look correct on standard screens. You can increase both of those settings slightly if you feel like the display elements look uncomfortably small.

Eclipse troubleshooting

Sometimes eclipse will tell you that you have errors when you open it. The following operations (may) help.

• Refresh, clean and build all projects. Select all projects, press F5 to refresh, then go to Project -> Clean to clean all projects.
• Go to Run -> Run Configurations -> Plugins and press "Add required plugins". You can now validate/apply your choice.
• In uk.ac.stfc.isis.ibex.targetplatform, open uk.ac.stfc.isis.ibex.targetplatform.target and click "set as target platform".
• If you have done all these steps and it still doesn't work, there is more troubleshooting information here.
• If all else fails, delete all the projects from eclipse's workspace and reimport them.