OH2: Which interface allows me to do what I could in OH1

[rlkoshak (Rich Koshak)]

@Max_G

The question is – and I may not have seen all the documentation… given that I have some OH1 experience, which interface or mode to I chose in order to work with the minimum interface set to manage all of the functions of OH2?

I hope you have seen and are at least nominally following the Migration Tutorial.

minimal

This will have just core OH without anything else installed, including PaperUI.

@Max_G

I wanted to ask this question, because – as a regular on the forum – I see all these posts: can’t do this here and can’t do this there; and need to do this in a config file, because the UI can’t do this yet, etc.

… it has confused me to the point, that I do not know where to go next in order to avoid those pitfalls.

Over time the UIs have grown more and more capable. But there is nothing that requires the UIs. The migration tutorial tries to present both the UI approach and text file based approach. Coming from OH 1 you will probably desire to stick to more text based and relegate PaperUI et al to experimentation and play until you learn a bit more how they work.

@Max_G

Given that I want to ‘transfer’ my OH1 config to OH2 as easy and as straight forward as possible, and use either one ‘tool’ or method to do all the config of OH2, what should I do next to get there.

Follow the text based configurations sections of the Migration Tutorial. It walks you through getting your current OH 1.x working on OH 2.x core without using any OH 2 specific concepts or bindings (i.e. all text based configs, all 1.x version bindings, no changes to .items, minimal changes to .rules, no changes to persistence and sitemap). Then you can choose to migrate to the 2.x version of bindings you are using (or never migrate) at your leisure.

@Max_G

I am not even sure, whether OH2 is fully functional to the point that one tool can be used OR is that even the goal, and I need to use say 3 tools/methods to configure it?

You can use all text based configs. You might need to use the karaf console for some debugging but that is unlikely.

@Max_G

Also, do I need a different Designer version?

Yes, you will need Eclipse SmartHome Designer 0.8 (look at the installation section of the Docs for links and instructions). It is essentially the same old Designer updated to work with new concepts and files added to OH 2. It is missing some functionality, mainly it is unable to recognize stuff defined outside of the text files (e.g. Items created in PaperUI) and it is missing recognition of non-core Actions.

@Max_G

Or is config done differently now?

There is a new Experimental Rules Engine but for your purposes coding is done exactly the same with a few very minor differences, the main one being you no longer need all those imports at the top of your rules.

@Max_G

So is there – as part of OH2 – one tool to configure all OH2 functionality, if possible regardless of UI being used?

Right now text based config file editing using Designer is your one tool to rule them all. PaperUI and Habmin are growing in capability with every release but sitemaps are still not supported.

@Max_G

Is VisualStudio a Microsoft product (cost or free)?

You can use the Free VisualStudio and @kubawolanin wrote a plug-in for it that can syntax highlight OH config files. I don’t think it does as deep and thorough a job of syntax checking as Designer but it does include the ability to insert code snippets and I know he has included a lot of the Design Pattern examples as snippets.

You can read more about it here