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Has anyone here managed to build WSO2 (orbit/kernel/platform 4.0.0) from source?

After having spent three days, more or less, trying to build this project from source I'm about to give up.

There are people here trying to help and I do appreciate that. Event when following their advise the build process is cumbersome and ultimately fails. Wrong POM references, broken tests and strange configuration are among the things we have encountered.

So, before trying harder it would be great to know if anyone has succeeded.

I have a particularly hard time believing that new WSO2 developers need to deal with this before they can start contributing and do admit that my cynical nature leaves me repeatedly thinking that this can be no accident.

The WSO2 framework/stack looks awesome in so many ways but this experience is almost enough to turn elsewhere and is more frustrating than anything I have ever encountered.

If you feel that this criticism is unfair then I apologize, there should be no reason to censor this entry as was the case with my last question on the same topic.

Acmeguy
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  • I modified your previous [post](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17929756/how-to-build-wso2-4-x-from-source), but as I commented on the post it wasn't censorship - it was to make the question more useful to a wider audience. Please feel free to reverse my edits. – Chris Snow Aug 02 '13 at 19:53
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    Are you comfortable with Linux and virtualbox? I've been toying with the idea of using vagrant to automatically set up a WSO2 development environment from scratch that builds successfully. This would make it very easily for newbies to get a successful build. – Chris Snow Aug 02 '13 at 20:28

3 Answers3

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First of all, I really appreciate your interest in WSO2 products. There are many questions regarding building from source in StackOverflow.

I guess you already know about orbit, kernel and platform. The SVN is structured in this way as WSO2 products are built from a single platform. Basically a WSO2 Product is "Carbon Kernel + Set of features"

You are trying to build a "released branch", so there should not be any build failures. We make sure that there aren't any build failures before releasing a branch. Usually there are multiple products released from a branch.

You can see the Release Matrix and figure out the product version and the platform version.

My personal opinion is that you should not start building the whole platform, especially when the particular branch is released. The released artifacts are already in the WSO2 Maven Repository. So, it is not really necessary to build unless you modify the code.

If you need to improve an existing component, you can just checkout the relevant component and do the modification. Each WSO2 Product has a built-in patch applying system. You can just build the jar and apply it as patch to product.

I would advice you to subscribe to WSO2 mailing lists and post your questions there (May be to dev@). Just let us know how you would like to contribute and we would be more than happy to guide you.

I can understand the frustration of you and I do not feel that is not fair!

I would like to hear from you again.

Thanks!

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Isuru Perera
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  • Thank you Isuru, I will start down that path tomorrow. I have tried to build individual products (BAM 2.3.0) but ran in to a similar set of problems. – Acmeguy Jul 31 '13 at 03:51
  • That's great! BAM 2.3.0 is also a released product and it should build successfully. Just post us any build errors and we can help you via dev@ mailing list. Thanks! – Isuru Perera Jul 31 '13 at 04:10
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I succeeded building, but it took me quite a few days. I think that improving the build process (and documentation) is a must for WSO2 to attract new developers. During my frustration, I created some JIRA's that reflect this:

Like you I was massively frustrated by the whole build and support process. After the lengthy pain getting to my first successful build, I have put WSO2 stuff to the side for a while to focus on some other projects. I'm not sure I'm ready to go back and attempt to build everything from scratch just yet!!!

I think the main problem that us non-WSO2 developers have is that there isn't an experienced developer sitting next to us to guide you through the issues. Stackoverflow doesn't encourage this sort of community. I think there is a need for a WSO2 user group - where frustrated new (and experienced) developers can help each other out, or at least give each other moral support.

One thing that may help you is to focus on a smaller chunk of WSO2. AXIS2, Synapse or Carbon are all projects that are a much smaller bite size, which probably makes sense mastering for a WSO2 newbie developer. Also, there is an exciting new project donated to Apache by WSO2 - Apache Stratos. This project may help you get on the ladder.

Finally, coming back to your frustration, and cynicism towards WSO2. As mentioned above, I had similar strong feelings during my first build. As time has moved on, I believe WSO2 is a completely transparent company. I just think their community model isn't right yet. This post touches on some of the issues.

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Chris Snow
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  • Hi SHC (can you share your name ?), I looked at the tickets you've opened and the associated actions taken by WSO2. The first (CARBON-14121) points to 2 wiki-pages, the first says "clone and build with mvn install" which is a start ... but does not really help out, the second is removed and not accessible. The second (DOCUMENTATION-67) is a kind of "let's do better next time" invite to devs ... but is there any place where the full build instructions have been actually published ? (for WSO2 trunk I mean) – lucamilanesio Feb 05 '14 at 11:28
  • @lucamilanesio - my name is Chris Snow. I have made some progress towards automating a development environment setup. Checkout [this for building chunk05](https://github.com/snowch/carbon-products-development-environment). The project is an early proof-of-concept. Feel free to raise any issues on github. – Chris Snow Feb 05 '14 at 12:30
  • WSO2 currently moving towards continuous delivery and most of the active development happening in GIThub. – Vanji Jun 02 '14 at 03:54
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As Isuru has mentioned you better try only the released branch but not the trunk unless you are working with the latest product. Every time we release a Carbon version or a product we cut a tag. Some people may have mistakenly committed to a released branch in the worst case but still the tag is there for you. [1] explains how to build the trunk, branch and the tag. And also if you have any BAM questions you can ask in Stack overflow as well. BAM 2.3.0 you are trying to build is a very stable version with many bugs fixed and you are welcome to ask questions here.

[1] http://maninda.blogspot.com/2013/07/how-to-build-wso2-code.html

Maninda
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    Thank you. This is one of the several articles I have followed, to the letter, with the same results. I will try this again today and inform you/Isuru/others of the progress on the mailing-list. – Acmeguy Jul 31 '13 at 08:01