New to customizing the palette

[chillwabbitt]

Hi, I need some guidance. I have downloaded the money-tasks project, compiled it and packaged it into a jar. I've then added to via eclipse preferences and gone as far as closing Eclipse and restarting it, but it just does not show up in the palette.

Does anyone have any ideas?

I'm using Juno with the latest Activiti designer plugin.

Thanks in advance.

[dognose]

Hey guys,

having exactly the same problem - any solution for this so far?

I followed http://activiti.org/userguide/index.html#eclipseDesignerExtending exactly, but neither the
custom tasks are shown nor the removal of existing tasks is working.

[chillwabbitt]

No solution yet, I'm still battling.

[tiesebarrell]

Chillwabbitt,

that warning has nothing to do with Designer, but is a common Maven issue. It's simply telling you that the encoding for the build is not explicitly set and is therefore reverting to the default system encoding, which is platform dependent. You can resolve this by adding a property:

<project>
  …
  <properties>
    <project.build.sourceEncoding>UTF-8</project.build.sourceEncoding>
  </properties>
  …
</project>
For more information, check this page: http://maven.apache.org/general.html

[chillwabbitt]

SUCCESS!!! - I found that when I loaded an "external jar" into the Activiti library, it was referencing the money-tasks/target/money-tasks-1.0.0-SNAPSHOT.jar, which obviously my workflow project knows nothing about. To solve this I copied out the .jar from the target directory and placed it in my GLOBAL_LIB folder on my c drive, and referenced it from there. Tada! she works.

Thanks for all the time guys.

[dognose]

I also found a solution:

The problem - in my case - was, that i used the same Eclipse Version for the Extension project AND for my project,
that references the "Activiti Designer Extensions" Lib.

This caused the reference inside the Lib to become "ProjectName/target/myExtensions-1-0-0-0.jar" instead of using the absolute path.
I moved the jar file to an "out of workspace" folder (C:\myExtensions\myExtensions-1-0-0-0.jar) and added that jar to the User Library.

Then it works.

edit: Seems to be the same solution - so maybe one may "add" this somewhere inside the documentation?

Maybe like this:

• Once you've created your extension JAR (for instance, by performing a mvn install in your project to build it with Maven), you need to transfer the extension to the computer where Activiti Designer is installed;


• Store the extension somewhere on the hard drive where it will be able to remain and remember the location;
• Note: If you are using the same Eclipse-Build you need to move the jar out of the project-folder, otherwhise the added reference will be relative eclipse project link and therefore not working!



• Start Activiti Designer and from the menu, select Window > Preferences


• In the preferences screen, type user as keyword. You should see an option to access the User Libraries in Eclipse in the Java section.

while following this steps, i assumed this step to be not required, because the jar is already on the same computer.

[tiesebarrell]

That might be a useful addition to the documentation. I had assumed it was obvious the configuration of the JARs must be done in the Eclipse installation that actually contains the Designer, but if people are confused while developing, I don't see why we wouldn't help them out with an extra note as you've suggested. Please create a Jira issue to update the documentation and post back the number here. I'll make sure it gets added to the documentation.

[chillwabbitt]

I was doing the jar config in the version of eclipse that has the designer, it seems to me that if the code for your extension project is open as an eclipse project it adds the reference to the project workspace and not the absolute path. Must be an eclipse thing.

[tiesebarrell]

OK, so you mean you only have one Eclipse installation and are doing the dev and testing in the same one? I can see how that would not work properly. On the other hand, maybe we should fix that so it doesn't matter how the reference is stored and Designer can load the JAR no matter whether it's in the workspace or outside. If you think that would be useful, please create a Jira issue for that as well. The resolving mechanism will likely be updated sometime soon so maybe we could incorporate this in one go.

[dognose]

I had assumed it was obvious the configuration of the JARs must be done in the Eclipse installation that actually contains the Designer

This is what I did - But then its not working (at the moment)

Hopefully i can describe it better with an Example:

Imaging, i have 2 Projects opened in my Eclipse-Instance:
Project1
Project2

Project1 is the one, where i am using Activiti-Engine, the Designer and my Core-Application.
Project2 is the "Activiti Designer Extension" Project.

So, i add "Project2's jar file" to the User Library "Activiti Designer Extension".
Adding THIS User Library to Project1 then, will cause the link to the Jar file to become: "Project2/target/project2-1.0.0.0.jar" which can not be resolved
correctly.

I assume that Eclipse can handle those workspace-wide relations, but the designer can't. Moving the Jar to "C:" and Adding THAT Jar file to the
User Library, will cause the Path to be displayed as "C:/project2-1.0.0.0.jar" - which finally works.

Picture tells more than thousand words:
Not working: (Absolute Path would be C:\dev\workspaces\Activiti Designer Extensions\target\…jar, but translated "relative" to Workspace by Eclipse i assume, because BOTH Projects
share the same workspace)
[img]http://www.abload.de/img/notworkinguup1j.png[/img]

second working (Absolute Path stays absolute, since out of workspace)
[img]http://www.abload.de/img/workinguvovy.png[/img]

Hot thats not to confusing (i'm bad at explaining things)

[chillwabbitt]

Exactly what we saying.