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How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856900]

Sun, 08 January 2023 15:36

Jean Rebillat

Messages: 14
Registered: December 2010

Junior Member

Hi !
I was a developer in an aerospace company in France.
I apologize for my simple and silly question, hoping you will forgive me :

Since a few years, I occasionnaly tried to work with RAP with Eclipse and Tomcat, as I have done in the company I worked in.

I have a site idea and want to tyry doing it in RAP, but I am stuck and can't find any real help documentation on how to start a new project and deploy it with today's material.
When working, most of the work was realized through the RAP Tools, that is not anymore available in the Eclipse repositories for the latest Eclipse versions.

Can anyone give me a link on a tutorial page for Eclipe 2022-12 and the last RAP version (or nearly the last...) ?

Once more, I apologize...

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856905 is a reply to message #1856900]

Sun, 08 January 2023 19:37

Benjamin Wolff

Messages: 136
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

Hi Jean,

out of curiosity, do you need to rely on the workbench and/or OSGi in your project? There is the possibility to only use RWT and JFace as the UI framework in "standalone mode". I'm actively maintaining and developing a fairly complex web app running RWT/JFace as the UI on Spring Boot 2.7, Java 17 and Gradle, with all the bliss that comes along with this tech stack. However, the downside is that you won't be able to use the Eclipse workbench or OSGi, which is probably why you would use RAP in the first place.

More information is available here: https://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php?t=msg&th=1110729&goto=1852206&#msg_1852206

Just in case this could be a possible setup for your use case.

HTH,
Ben

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856906 is a reply to message #1856905]

Sun, 08 January 2023 19:56

Jean Rebillat

Messages: 14
Registered: December 2010

Junior Member

Yes, you are right, Benjamin :
I do not need all workbench classes, just RWT and JFace, for this project at least. Only an UI is needed in a web application. Thus the problem will be most simpler to solve in it only needs two libraries.

Given your advice, I will try to create the war file...

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856920 is a reply to message #1856906]

Mon, 09 January 2023 14:21

Benjamin Wolff

Messages: 136
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

I learned something important about my suggested setup yesterday: it turns out that the Spring Boot 2.7 version line with stop free support end of 2023. From this point onwards, apps should have moved to Spring Boot 3, which uses the Jakarta EE namespace. For the moment, there are no plans to port RAP/RWT to the Jakarta EE APIs, thus you would be stuck to the legacy javax.servlet APIs.

See: https://github.com/eclipse-rap/org.eclipse.rap/issues/73

Some big players and frameworks in the Java eco system are moving towards Jakarta EE APIs (Spring, Hibernate, Tomcat, etc.). So be aware of this upcoming end-of-support issue end of 2023.

HTH,
Ben

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856946 is a reply to message #1856900]

Tue, 10 January 2023 15:04

Vincenzo Caselli

Messages: 235
Registered: January 2012

Senior Member

Hi Jean,
let me clarify first that we've used RAP in the past, but not recently.
Aside that, just out of curiosity (and nostalgy), I tried the following steps in a few minutes from scratch:

with Eclipse installer (Oomph) I installed a brand new 2022-12 "Eclipse IDE for RCP and RAP Developers" with JRE 19
launched and opened a brand new workspace
File, New, Plug-in Project wizard
Create a rich client application? No
Create a plug-in using a template: Yes
Selected "RAP e4 Template"
Finish
(the first time you will be asked if you want to install a RAP Target Platform: confirm all and wait for the Target Platform to be created - it may take some minutes - just check the status bar in the bottom right area)
when the target platform is ready, click the hyperlink named "Launch a RAP Application in Debug mode" in the main editor
the internal browser will try to open an URL similar to this http://127.0.0.1:61257/e4, with errors; just ignore it, copy the URL and open in your browser, e.g. Chrome
and voilà a simple e4 RAP application!

By the way, RAP Tools are automatically installed! You can see them in File, Help, Install New Software.., select
2022-12 - https://download.eclipse.org/releases/2022-12/
uncheck "Hide items that are already installed", expand "Web, XML, ... " Category (the last one) and you'll see RAP Tools 3.23 installed

Now you can start playing with SimplePart.java class

HTH
Vincenzo

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856949 is a reply to message #1856946]

Tue, 10 January 2023 15:29

Jean Rebillat

Messages: 14
Registered: December 2010

Junior Member

Thanks, Vincenzo.
I already managed to make this part work on my station.

My problem is about the following work to be done : create a WAR file out of the RAP project and publish it on a Tomcat server. The Libra tools that used to help (Indigo or Kepler eclipse versions) seems not to be availabe for now.

I may be able to use a example WAR file containing a RAP target to help me build my own, but I can't find any on the web....

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856952 is a reply to message #1856949]

Tue, 10 January 2023 16:34

Benjamin Wolff

Messages: 136
Registered: July 2009

Senior Member

I haven't used RAP in Eclipse for quite a while now, but I used the following approach to make Libra (War tooling) work again in later Eclipse versions:

- Do not install the "War product" bundle from Eclipse p2 repo, if it's still available there (was broken anyway for many years already).
- Download the latest nightly build of Libra. It used to be a p2 repo archive file.
- Add the p2 repo archive as a software source in Eclipse and install "War product" from it.
- The WAR tooling views to build a WAR file used to work again in Eclipse.

Again, not sure if that still works. Also, I couldn't find the nightly Libra builds anymore, since the links on the Eclipse websites seem to be dead.

It's probably best to use Maven and Tycho to build WAR files. I tried to make it work a couple of times, but never managed to make it work, especially when using additional non-p2 dependencies.

See: https://www.eclipse.org/forums/index.php/t/1093948/

[Updated on: Tue, 10 January 2023 16:36]

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856954 is a reply to message #1856952]

Tue, 10 January 2023 18:04

Vincenzo Caselli

Messages: 235
Registered: January 2012

Senior Member

Yes, true: Libra is no more available.

That's a pity, because I just installed WindowBuilder from the Marketplace and with it, designing SimplePart.java is so much a pleasure!

A way to easily produce the WAR seems just the last mile needed..

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856972 is a reply to message #1856920]

Wed, 11 January 2023 10:37

Ivan Furnadjiev

Messages: 2426
Registered: July 2009
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Senior Member

Hi Ben,

I want to share something about Jakarta EE 9 support in RAP. I've tested one tool provided by Apache Tomcat [1, 2] (Apache Tomcat migration tool for Jakarta EE) with the latest RAP release. There are actually minor problems to convert a war file (RAP app) based on javax namespace to jakarta namespace.
I've opened an issues against Equinox [3] and Tomcat [4].
In general, you can use this tool to make RAP application compatible with Jakarta EE 9. The simplest way is to drop the war file not in Tomcat 10 "webapps" folder, but in "webapps-javaee" and the migration tool will do the job automatically.

I hope that the blocking issue will be fixed soon.

[1] https://tomcat.apache.org/download-migration.cgi
[2] https://github.com/apache/tomcat-jakartaee-migration
[3] https://github.com/eclipse-equinox/equinox/pull/164
[4] https://github.com/apache/tomcat-jakartaee-migration/issues/39

Best regards,
Ivan

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1856976 is a reply to message #1856972]

Wed, 11 January 2023 12:25

Vincenzo Caselli

Messages: 235
Registered: January 2012

Senior Member

Hi Ivan,
thank you for the info, but the problem here is how to obtain the war itself

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1857025 is a reply to message #1856976]

Fri, 13 January 2023 09:50

Jean Rebillat

Messages: 14
Registered: December 2010

Junior Member

In fact, the real problem for me is first how to launch a RAP application outside Eclipse ?

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Re: How to work with RAP in 2023 ? [message #1857026 is a reply to message #1857025]

Fri, 13 January 2023 12:43

Ivan Furnadjiev

Messages: 2426
Registered: July 2009
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria

Senior Member

Hi,

In the RAP project we are using Tycho to build all demos war files [1]. This approach works without problem for almost 10 years.

[1] https://github.com/eclipse-rap/org.eclipse.rap/tree/main/releng/org.eclipse.rap.examples.build

Best regards,
Ivan

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