How to Build the Email Answering System

JDK

Set up java. I won't include instructions here, just a link to the Sun j2se site. I use version 1.4.0, and you need a JDK (java development kit), not a JRE (java runtime environment).

Test your installation by typing command:

javac

This should display help on the java compiler options.

Ant

Set up ant, the Java-based build tool from the Apache Jakarta project. It is kind of like Make, but without Make's wrinkles. The build.xml file the Email Answering System uses relies on command tags available in Ant version 1.4.1 or higher. I used jakarta-ant-1.4.1-bin.zip.

Basically you unzip the file into a directory and add an ANT_HOME environment variable that points at it. Test your installation by typing the command:

ant -help

This should display help on ant options.

Third Party Libraries

The application (not the connector) relies on an lib/htmlparser.jar from the HTML Parser project. The build.xml file tries to build everything by default so you will need this. The version I'm using is 1.3-20030125 which you can get here.

The unit test code relies on lib/junit.jar from the JUnit project. The version I'm using is 3.8.1 which you can get here.

Sources

The email_application_1_0.zip file contains a src.jar file. If you've installed the system already this file should be in the top level directory you chose.

Unjar this file with the command:

jar -xf src.jar

There should now be a build.xml in the top level directory. You can see the ant targets by typing:

ant -projecthelp

Building

The default ant target 'all' builds everything:

ant

If you just want to build some of the parts see the help list:

ant -projecthelp

A configuration dialog will be raised the first time the build is run to assist with the connector (resource adapter) configuration. These setting will be saved so subsequent builds have no interaction.

Developing

For development purposes you might want to get the NetBeans IDE. Mount the root directory where the Email Answering System is installed and add the build.xml file and the com, test and doc-files directories, along with the junit.jar and htmlparser.jar files from the lib directory.