Where is the installation documentation?

[jonnycavell]

Hi

I may be missing something, but I cannot find any information on the most basic thing - how to install Alfresco (Community Edition) on Windows. There is no reference or link to "installation" from the homepage, and my next choice, clicking on the menu item "Documentation", also yielded a page containing no reference to installation. My third choice, typing "installation" into the search box yielded a few Google results for newsletters, but no installation guide. Next, I downloaded the tutorial pdf, but this assumed I had already installed Alfresco.

Not put off, I went to the wiki -> documentation -> server admin guide -> server installation -> installing on ms windows -> download and install Alfresco. This page had the useful information "Having used Documentum for 10 years, everything I have read on Alfresco seems to make a lot of sense. Here I am : discovering the product, installing it and surely promoting it to my customers if it does what it says. Alfresco yours, Pascal".

None the wiser about how to install Alfresco, I have come here. Help!

[paulhh]

Hi

Yes, it's something we're aware of and trying to make clearer.  The JBoss, Tomcat and WAR bundles need to be unzipped and contain READMEs that say what to do.  However, the installer bundles are just binaries - so you don't get to see the README until it's installed 🙂

What we want to do is come up with a very simple description of each bundle and the minimum needed to get going on each of them, then add it to the Downloads page on our web site.

For you on Windows, you have 4 bundles to choose from:

Installer (setup)
——————
Contains everything you need, including:
- JDK 1.5
- OpenOffice (portable)
- Tomcat
- Alfresco server (WAR)
- Startup scripts and platform-specific binaries
- Hypersonic DB

An install wizard puts it all in one place ready to go, including shortcuts on the Start menu.  The wizard also give you the option of not installing the JDK or OpenOffice (but if you already have the correct version of these, you may be better off with one of the other bundles as a smaller download). 

The installer bundle is the best option for exploring Alfresco, since you can be up and running in a few minutes without worrying about whether you have the right JDK and so on.

If you want to use a different DB than Hypersonic (which you will if you want to use it for anything serious), then you should configure that before starting the Alfresco server for the first time.  You can change later, but it means you have to worry about migrating data and content properly.  It's ideal for building little demos and proofs-ot-concept, since the DB is portable.


Tomcat
——–
Contains:
- Tomcat
- Alfresco server (WAR)
- Startup scripts and platform-specific binaries
- Hypersonic DB

If you already have JDK 1.5 and OpenOffice installed, then you just need to unzip the Tomcat bundle somewhere and run the alf_start script.  The startup scripts all run relative to their location - you can even move the Alfresco folder somewhere else later and everything should still run.  Again, by default the Hypersonic DB will be used, so deciding which DB you want to use is best done before the first start up.


JBoss
——
Contains:
- JBoss including JBoss Portal
- Alfresco server (WAR)
- Startup scripts and platform-specific binaries
- Hypersonic DB

If you already have JDK 1.5 and OpenOffice installed, then you just need to unzip the JBoss bundle somewhere and run the alf_start script, just as for the Tomcat bundle. 

A key thing to note is that JBoss Portal is included and the Alfresco server (WAR) has a few library differences to the standard Tomcat and WAR bundles to resolve clashes in JBoss Portal.


WAR
—–
Contains:
- Alfresco server (WAR)
- Startup scripts and platform-specific binaries

This bundle assumes you have the correct JDK, OpenOffice and Java container and know what you're doing.  This bundle is often the best to take for upgrades, since it's the smallest and has everything that is Alfresco-specific.

There is also the SDK bundle, which is aimed at developers and contains the full Alfresco server and source code. 


Hope that helps!

Cheers
Paul.

[jonnycavell]

Thanks very much - that was extremely useful information!

I've got it up and running now, but just one more thing - are there any docs on how to get it running using SQL Server? Thanks.

[aznk]

Hi,
I'm a bit confused about sdk.

I followed instructions here :
http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Alfresco_SDK
where it was said that "SDK is used stand-alone, but an Alfresco Release Installation is also required"

So we need also to install the alfresco release installation in order to run alfresco on the web browser ? Or does the sdk contain all the necessary files to run alfresco on tomcat for example ?

I also explored content of alfresco-community-sdk-1.4.0, but I'm not sure where we should put the content, in an already existing alfresco installation ? If yes, where exactly ?

Thanks.

[rivetlogic]

Hi,

The Alfresco SDK is standalone. It can sit anywhere you like. The idea is for it to fit in your development environment easily.

The product of an Alfresco SDK customization is an alfresco.war file that needs to be deployed into an Alfresco runtime environment (e.g. Tomcat or JBossAS).

That is why you need a running installation of Alfresco to actually see your customization(s) in action.

That said, the answer to your question:

So we need also to install the alfresco release installation in order to run alfresco on the web browser ? Or does the sdk contain all the necessary files to run alfresco on tomcat for example ?

is that you need to install the alfresco release installation in order to run alfresco on the web browser.

Hope this helps.

-Aladdin

[aznk]

Hi,
Thanks for your answer.
I could make alfresco sdk work properly and tested it successfully.
However, I couldn't make clear the difference between using sdk or SVN bundles, apart from the fact that SVN contains all build files and is aimed to develop bug fixes or extend the core of alfresco.
We would like to customize the interface, add some aspects and modify some behaviors. We also would like ton integrate a wiki functionality. I could see a plugin developed on forge for this :
http://forge.alfresco.com/projects/wikispace/
but apparently, it requires installing SVN and deploying while projects.
What do you advise me to do in our case ? As deploying all project takes a lot of time…
Kind regards.

[rivetlogic]

Hi,

Your understanding of the difference between SDK and SVN is correct. You shouldn't need to mess with the SVN codebase unless you want to make changes to the Alfresco core. Even then some core changes can be made using the SDK. In other words, try to avoid having to make changes to the core as much as possible. That will make your life much easier when upgrading Alfresco versions.

As far as the wiki project is concerned, it has been developed for Alfresco 1.3. That is most probably why it wasn't implemented using the SDK.

My advice to you would be to take the wiki files and put them into an Eclipse project that follows the SDK coding style. You can look at the sample projects that come with the SDK to see how to do that. Make sure to add all your extensions to that project and deploy it as a single JAR.

Cheers,

–Aladdin

[aznk]

Hi,

Indeed, this project has been developed for version 1.3, and there are some incompatibilities since I'm using 1.4.

There are some files we need to modify before deploying them, one of them is "web_TEMPLATE.xml" and was used at build-time to generate a clean web.xml in version 1.3. I couldn't find any corresponding files in Alfresco, should I try to modify wel.xml or another file instead ?

About putting the files in the sdk, is it right to do the following things :
- import the files into eclipse instead of copying them in the codebase (since we're not messing with svn)
- copy files to modify from the svn codebase into eclipse, since some of them don't exist in alfresco installation
- package all this with a build.xml file

Cheers

[rivetlogic]

Hi,

I'm not familiar with the details for that project's code, but you have the right idea.

Just remember that the product of an Alfresco SDK project build is an entire alfresco.war file. So if you find yourself in the position where you must edit a core alfresco file (e.g. web.xml), then you can have that file in your project, and you will have to maintain it. Any changes made to that file should then be pushed into the vanilla alfresco.war to replace the one that is already there.

Hope this helps,

–Aladdin

[mdg]

Hi

Yes, it's something we're aware of and trying to make clearer…. etc

…
Hope that helps!

Cheers
Paul.

Maybe things have changed since you posted this reply, but the download and installation process still isn't any clearer and there isn't any download file actually called Installer that I can find on the download page.

When I go to the download page it doesn't seem to make any distinction between operating systems, windows or otherwise, it just says if you're not sure which one you need download the tomcat zip. Then when I click on the Download Alfresco Community link I get to the Source Forge page and am given nine files to choose from. The zip and tar zip options are self evident, as are the PDFs and war, but do I need the     alfresco-mmt-2.1.0.jar   and the sample extensions?

Also, there doesn't seem to be any install wizard that I can find, and following the instructions in the readme txt doesn't produce any useful results either.

Now I'm totally lost. I've downloaded the program, unzipped it as per instructions, ran the bat file and nothing happens.

I would really appreciate some straight forward and simple instructions on how to install it and get it up and running.

Thanks in advance.