Since I was not able to find a working HowTo to start developing (and most importantly debug) a binding in IntelliJ I thought I’d share my setup after finally get it working.
Prerequisities
git is installed
Maven is installed
IntelliJ is installed (community edition should suffice, I recommend to use the Toolbox for installation for easier updates)
Java 8 is installed
What is the goal?
To develop a (existing) binding in IntelliJ and debug it using IntelliJ.
How is that achieved?
By cloning a fork of the openhab addons repository and building it using IntelliJ/Maven. Then a clone of the official openhab distribution project is built.
Finally, the distribution is started up in debug mode, the freshly built addon is copied into its addon directory and this running openhab instance is remote debugged with IntelliJ.
change into <DISTRO_DIR> and start the distrobution in debug mode, e. g.:
cd ~/openhab-test-distro
be sure to run a Java 8 (you can check with java -version)
./start_debug.sh
the distribution will start up (OpenHAB console):
Listening for transport dt_socket at address: 5005`
...
Hit '<tab>' for a list of available commands
and '[cmd] --help' for help on a specific command.
Hit '<ctrl-d>' or type 'system:shutdown' or 'logout' to shutdown openHAB.
you can use “log:tail” on the openhab console to stream the openhab logs
open a webbrowser and locate to http://localhost:8080/ to configure the webinterfaces for the openhab instance
clone your own fork of the openhab addons repository in a new directory (hitherto <ADDON_DIR>) (replace git user name accordingly)
open IntelliJ and create a new Project from existing sources (File | New | Project from existing sources) and pick <ADDON_DIR>/pom.xml
IntelliJ will start importing, indexing and building, it will take while, wait until finished (see status bar)
Use Maven to clean & install the addons project - there are several ways to do so:
mvn clean install in the root of <ADDON_DIR> using commandline Maven
or IntelliJ Maven view
or IntelliJ Maven Helper plugin
you might want to skip tests for a quicker build
you might want to build only the single addon you are interested in (the whole addons directory build can take quite a while)
I ran into build errors with an older master version - so try with the current master and check if the official master build is green: https://ci.openhab.org/job/openHAB2-Bundles/
some of the addons might fail to build - if it’s not the one, you’re interested in that should not bother you
you might later want to update the private fork of the openhab2-addons repository from the official repository master branch
I’d like to get some feedback here first. I have no idea if this is the official way or maybe there are better methods, but this is the one I figured out working for me.
Please feel free to comment or to suggest improvements.
Hey, thank you for the guide. I get an error in step 6 that the package org.eclipse.smarthome cannot be found. Do you have any hint, how to solve this?
‘The import org.eclipse.smarthome cannot be resolved’
do you mean the 2.5.x branch of the openhab-distro? I just did that, but i still get the same error if i run mvn clean install in the addon-dir
EDIT: Another weird thing is that the openhab-disto/distributions/openhab/target folder do not exist after a ‘mvn clean install’ in the distro folder
Another EDIT: i executed ‘mvn clean install’ in the /distributions/openhab folder and now i got my jar file for openhab. But still the same at ‘mvn clean install’ at the bundles.
Note that these are 2 separate git projects (thus having each it’s own branch respectively):
steps 1 - 3 describe building of the distribution project, wich will be used to run the actual addon
steps 4 - 6 describe building of the addon(s) project
the remaining steps describe how to debug the addon using the distro
You’ll see the corresponding git branch in IntelliJ when you have a file of the project open in the editor (lower right, status bar).
From my understanding you have trouble building the addons (step 6).
make sure your addons project is up to date with the official openhab addons master branch (if you forked the repo with github, you need to merge the openhab addons master into your fork).
mvn clean will delete the target directory, mvn install will build the project. If the build fails due to some error, not everything (or nothing at all) will be built to the target directory
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.karaf.tooling:karaf-maven-plugin:4.2.7:kar (default-kar) on project distro-kar: Failed to create archive: Failure to find org.openhab.ui.bundles:org.openhab.ui.dashboard:jar:2.5.5-SNAPSHOT in http://repo.carlspring.org/content/groups/carlspring was cached in the local repository, resolution will not be reattempted until the update interval of carlspring has elapsed or updates are forced
Crearly Maven do not fin .dashboard:jar:2.5.5-SNAPSHOT. how can I fix that? Thanks
I just checked out the repo (openhab-distro) into a fresh directory and was able to build it with mvn clean install.
Try the usual stuff (pull the latest version, you also might want to use mavens -U option), but actually I don’t know the distribution project - if you want to make changes there then start getting to know it by finding out the reason for the error
Maybe you want to raise an issue on Github or contact one of the devs, but since it builds fine for me its probably not a (general) bug.
Just cd into the addon directory and execute the command from there. Each addon has its own POM file. Note that you might have to build the whole project initially at least once.
Since your are already using the console you can list the bundles. Apart from that, use logging in your addon. Refer to the developer documentation to read up on that kind of stuff, e. g. Coding Guidelines | openHAB
