Easy Setup Overview

This document explains the procedures necessary to download and install ArchStudio. ArchStudio has three critical components:

1. A Java 2™ Standard Edition (J2SE) version 1.6 virtual machine;
2. Eclipse version 4.2 or better; and
3. ArchStudio itself.

ArchStudio also includes some binary distributions of software (e.g., JOGL) for the following operating systems:

1. Windows 32-/64-bit
2. Mac OS X 32-/64-bit
3. Linux 32-/64-bit

If you already have Java 1.6 or Eclipse 4.2 (or better) installed, you may safely skip those parts of these instructions as they require no special configuration for ArchStudio.

Step 1: Setting up Java

ArchStudio (and Eclipse) are Java applications. ArchStudio is written for Java 2 Standard Edition version 6 (aka JDK1.6) or better. It will not run properly in any previous version of Java.

It is possible that you already have Java 6 installed on your machine. To check, start a command-prompt and run:

java -version

If the version reported is (1.)6.0 or better, skip to the next step. If not, you will need to obtain a version of Java for your target environment. In general, you can obtain such a release free of charge from Oracle at Java SE site. This is generally the path to pursue if you are running on Windows or Linux. Note that Oracle offers many Java 6 packages - nearly any should work, although we recommend the Java Development Kit (JDK) package.

MacOS X users can download a Java 6 development kit from Apple's Developer Site.

Linux users will want to investigate how Java is deployed on their particular distribution of Linux. Many distributions are now offering Java through their package repositories such as apt.

Step 2: Setting up Eclipse

ArchStudio requires Eclipse 4.2 or better. If you already have Eclipse installed, you may install ArchStudio into your existing environment and can skip to the next step. Alternatively, you can simply duplicate your Eclipse directory or download and extract another copy to create a copy of Eclipse solely for running ArchStudio.

Download Eclipse 4.2 or better from the Eclipse downloads site. Eclipse's site should provide adequate documentation for expanding the archive and starting the Eclipse environment. Start Eclipse. It may ask you for a workspace location. This is the directory where Eclipse will store projects, including ArchStudio projects that contain xADL files. You may accept the default or choose a different directory. We recommend creating a new directory outside of Eclipse's install directory, since this makes it easier to upgrade Eclipse later without having to go through extra trouble to migrate your workspace to the new version.

Once Eclipse is running, it may show the Welcome view if this is the first time it has been run. Close the Welcome view and the Java development perspective should be displayed. Once Eclipse is running, you are ready to install ArchStudio.

Step 3: Installing ArchStudio

This following steps walk you through the install of ArchStudio. Note that you must be connected to the Internet for this to work.

To install ArchStudio perform the following steps: Go to Help | Install New Software... In the "Work with:" text box (as highlighted on the left) enter the following URL: http://www.isr.uci.edu/projects/archstudio-5/updatesite-4.2 press Enter Select "ArchStudio" (as highlighted on the left) Click Next Click Next again Select "I accept the terms of the license agreements" Click Finish Wait for Eclipse to download ArchStudio, this may take several minutes.

Eventually, a security warning will appear, as shown on the left. Click on OK. When prompted to restart Eclipse, click Yes.

Step 4: Using ArchStudio

Once ArchStudio is installed, proceed to the getting started with an architecture.

Updating ArchStudio

Updates to ArchStudio are also deployed through the ArchStudio update site and are available through Eclipse's plug-in update mechanisms. To perform an update, do the following:

• Go to Help | Check for Updates

Contact Us

If you have questions not answered by this website, please feel free to contact the software architectures group at UC Irvine through the ArchStudio developer's (mailman protected) email list at: archstudio-dev [@] uci [.] edu. (Note: You must subscribe to the mail list before you can post to it.)