Setting up your Faban Development Environment using the NetBeans® IDE

Integrated Development Environments (IDE) are getting increased popularity in the Java developer community. Whether you want to develop a new Faban benchmark or integrate an existing benchmark by developing harness hooks, likely you'll want to use your favorite IDE for such development tasks. Instead of developing everything from scratch, the Faban server and bundle distributions provide sample code and projects that are very suitable to be used as templates for your new project. It also contains standard build scripts to help you build and test your project even better.

This document describes how you would set up the NetBeans IDE to work with projects following the Faban template.

1. Download and Install NetBeans IDE

This process is documented from NetBeans 5.0 and NetBeans 5.5. However, it may as well work with other versions of NetBeans.

Point your web browser to http://www.netbeans.org/
Download the NetBeans IDE
Install the Netbeans IDE

We'll refer to the NetBeans installation directory as $NETBEANS_HOME.

2. Download and install the Faban server or bundle distribution

You will need the server or bundle distribution for both your development and test system, assuming there are different systems.
Download the Faban server or bundle distribution from http://faban.sunsource.net/. Alternatively, you may also want to download the latest builds from http://faban.sunsource.net/nightly/. Faban is distributed as a gzipped tar file.
Find a location install Faban.
Untar the Faban tarball using the followings:

(Solaris) $ gunzip -c faban-server-xxxxxx.tar.gz | tar xvf -

(Linux) $ tar xvf faban-server-xxxxxx.tar.gz

(Win32) You'll need to find a utility to untar gzipped tar files for now.

This will create a directory named "faban" at your current working directory.

We will refer to the Faban installation directory as $FABAN_HOME from now on.

3. Create your Faban project

The sample project contains the project structure you'll want to use to develop a Faban benchmark. It also includes build scripts that should be appropriate for the majority of Faban projects. Use the following steps to copy the sample project and create your own project.

Locate your project directory. Note that this should not be the same as or under $FABAN_HOME.
Copy and rename the sample driver project:

On Unix:

$ cd $PROJECTS_DIR
$ cp -r $FABAN_HOME/samples/web1 .
$ mv web1 myfabanproject

On Win32, use Windows Explorer to copy the web1 directory tree to your project location and rename it to your preferred name.

We'll refer to your project directory (such as myfabanproject) as $PROJECT_HOME.

4. Start NetBeans

Use the launcher in your GUI or start Netbeans from the command line:

        $ $NETBEANS_HOME/bin/netbeans &

It might take a few seconds or a few minutes to startup Netbeans, depending on the system you're running on. But finally the Netbeans UI should show up on your desktop.

5. Configure Netbeans to know the Faban library

From the "Tools" menu on the menu bar, select "Library Manager." The library manager dialog box will pop up.
Click the "New Library..." button on the buttom left of the dialog box. A new library dialog box will pop up.
In the "Library Name" field, enter "Faban."
Select "Class Libraries" from the "Library Type" field.
Click the "OK" button.
Select the "Classpath" tab.
Click the "Add JAR/Folder..." button.
Browse and select all jar files from the $FABAN_HOME/lib directory, then click the "Add JAR/Folder" button.
Select the "Sources" tab.
Click the "Add JAR/Folder..." button.
Browse and select the $FABAN_HOME/src.zip file, then click the "Add JAR/Folder" button.
Select the "Javadoc" tab.
Click the "Add JAR/Folder..." button.
Browse and select the $FABAN_HOME/javadocs.zip file, then click the "Add JAR/Folder" button.
Press "OK" to confirm your addition of the Faban library.

6. Create a new project in NetBeans

From the "File" menu on the menu bar, select "New Project..." A "New Project" dialog box will pop up.
In the "Categories" box, select "General."
In the "Projects" box, select "Java Project with Existing Ant Script.
Click the "Next >" button.
In the "Location" field, enter your $PROJECT_HOME or click brows and select your $PROJECT_HOME directory.
All other fields in this screen will get filled in automatically.
The "Project Name" field wil show "Faban Benchmark". Change it to reflect your benchmark project name.
Click the "Next >" button. The next screen will show the build and run options.
The build and run options shown on the next screen are already set properly. Click ent "Next >" button to go to the "Select Package Folders" screen.
For the source package folders, click on "Add Folder..."
Select the src folder and press "Open."
Leave the test package folders blank.
Click the "Next >" button to go to the classpath screen.
Click "Add JAR/Folder..." to select the JAR files used in the classpath.
Navigate the file browser to the $FABAN_HOME/lib directory, select all jar files in this directory.
Click the "Open" button to add these files to the classpath.
Click the "Finish" button to create the project. Your new benchmark project should be added to NetBeans' "Projects" tab.

7. Configuring you new NetBeans project

In the "Projects" tab (on the left of the IDE), right click on the new project's name and select "Properties" from the bottom of the popup menu.
In the "Categories" box on the left, select "Output."
Click the "Add JAR/Folder..." button and select $PROJECT_HOME/build/classes. Click "Open" to finish selection.
In the "Categories" box on the left, select "Build and Run."
At the "Custom Menu Items" table at the bottom, click "Add."
In the "Ant Target" column, pull down the list and select "deploy."
In the "Label" column, double click and type in "Deploy Project", press the tab key.
Click the "OK" button accept the settings and finish configuring your NetBeans project.

8. Configure your build.properties file

Select the "Files" tab on the left window in the NetBeans IDE.
Expand your new project to see the files it contains.
Double-click on "build.properties" and Netbeans will open the file in the editor window.
Edit the file as follows:
Set the "bench.shortname" property to the short name of your benchmark. Spaces are not allowed here.
Set the "faban.home" property to $FABAN_HOME on your development system.
Set the "faban.url" property to point to your test system. For example, if your test system name is "foo", set faban.url to "http://foo:9980/". If your development and test system is the same, just set it to "http://localhost:9980". The default Faban port is 9980.