Variants of Installing the OTDT

This page explains the different variants for downloading and installing the Object Teams Development Tooling. For an easy start with Object Teams we recommend the full binary installation. Other options are provided to either save bandwidth or to re-use an existing Eclipse installation in order to save disk space etc. It is also possible to only install OT/Equinox without the Development Tooling for Object Teams.

 Full Binary Installation

Download size: approx. 130MB

This is the easiest way of installing the OTDT.

 Install OT/Equinox only

Download size: approx. 700kB

This model only prepares an existing Eclipse installation to host aspect plug-ins written in ObjectTeams/Java.

This kind of installation will not change the behavior of an existing Eclipse installation. It only enables Eclipse to run plug-ins written in ObjectTeams/Java.

In order to validate the installation of OT/Equinox, open the dialog Help > About Eclipse SDK > Plug-in Details and find the plug-in org.eclipse.ui.workbench. In the "Version" column you should see the additional string
*** OT-adapted by:
* org.objectteams.eclipse.transformer.example

 Install/upgrade the OTDT using the update manager

Download size: approx. 10MB

If you have previously installed the OTDT, the easiest way to upgrade to a newer version is by opening the product configuration: Help > Software Updates > Manage Configuration. Select the OTDT, click scan for updates and follow the instructions. That's all.

Alternatively, if you have successfully installed OT/Equinox (see above), you may use the update manager also for first-time installation of the OTDT. During this process you may choose to install the OTDT as an extension. This means the same Eclipse installation can be used with and without the OTDT feature. This way each user can easily use different extensions.

 Manually install the OTDT

These variants are not recommended, they are listed only for completeness.

Download size: approx. 10MB

A zip file of the OTDT feature can be installed manually on top of an existing Eclipse installation.
There are two variants to this:

A. (monolithic)
Modify an existing Eclipse installation. After that it will not be possible to use this installation without the OTDT. The only advantage over a full binary installation might be in reducing the size of the download from www.objectteams.org.
B. (extension)
If you have successfully installed OT/Equinox (see above), you may install the OTDT as an extension. This means the same Eclipse installation can be used with and without the OTDT feature. This variant requires manual work at the file level. Extensions are selected in the Eclipse installation directory.
After installing OT/Equinox, it is much easier to use the update manager instead of this method.

 Installing and using the command line compiler

The command line compiler can be downloaded as a single jar file called ecotj_1.1.X.jar.

The compiler can be run by the following command:
Use -help as the argument to see the list of options.

Running OT/J programs outside Eclipse is slightly more complicated. We have script files which hide all details, however, configuring these scripts is currently not automated. Please ask us via the otj-users mailing list, if you want to run OT/J programs from the command line.