Tài liệu Appendix B. Development Tools- P1 pdf

Appendix B. Development Tools- P1 This book describes how to create applications using Mozilla. Generally, all parts that go into an application (including XUL, CSS, XBL, and DTD files) need to be built by hand since no complete ready-made development tools or development applications are available that would make these manual processes easier. Creating all these files by hand is a great way to familiarize yourself with the way Mozilla works, and becoming more familiar with the inner workings of a Mozilla application certainly helps you see how the various parts fit together. Once you are comfortable creating these files by hand, using the platform becomes much easier and Mozilla fulfills its promise as a rich application development framework. Development tools are important, though, and platforms like Mozilla can't obtain the sort of developer base they deserve until tools that make application creation easier are available. Although some people want to learn everything there is to know about creating applications with Mozilla, many simply want to create something without a lot of fuss. Mozilla does not yet have a full set of development tools, but currently several development projects help with part of the application creation process. These tools don't make up a full-featured development environment, but they are useful. They also point the way to an area in Mozilla development that has a bright future and is worth watching. This appendix describes some of the new tools including XULKit, Patch Maker, the DOM Inspector, the JavaScript Debugger, and MozillaTranslator that are already becoming a part of the regular repertoire of Mozilla developers. By learning about how to use these tools for your own project, you can radically simplify the application development process, especially when you combine these tools. B.1. XULKit Much of the manual editing described in Chapters Chapter 6 , Chapter 7, and Chapter 8 can be automated with special scripts and templates being developed in the Mozilla source tree's tools/wizards section (these files are referred to collectively as the XULKit and can be found at http://www.hacksrus.com/~ginda/xulkit/doc/). These tools help you develop your Mozilla application by generating as much of the basic content, structure, and packaging of an application as possible, leaving you free to work only on the aspects of your application that you care about. We mention XULKit first because it can make setting up new Mozilla applications a snap. XULKit is essentially a set of two scripts: new-from-template.pl, which creates a new application framework, and makexpi.pl, which packages your application once you finish developing it. B.1.1. new-from-template.pl Script Though it's not named very elegantly, the new-from-template.pl Perl script takes information you provide in the form of a simple text file and uses it to create various parts of a Mozilla application. These parts include the XUL content, which has a basic menubar you can add to; an overlay that puts an item for your application into the Tools menu in the Mozilla browser; CSS for your XUL; and an installation script for the application package. You can base your application off of a couple of different templates, including a sophisticated one that lets you generate XPCOM interfaces for components you wish to use in your application, described below. Using these scripts, you can add content and logic to your application, restyle it, or build your application however you would like. You can also register the resulting directory with the chrome registry to see it working in your local copy of Mozilla, and when you finish developing it, the application directory is already structured in exactly the way it must be to be checked into the Mozilla source tree's extensions directory (if you want to check it into this common location for applications that become a part of Mozilla). When you want to distribute your application as described in Chapter 6 , you can use the other script in the XULKit, makexpi.pl, to package your application files into a cross-platform archive that can be installed from a regular web page. To use the new-from-template.pl script, point it at a template that you filled out with your own information. It then generates the basic application code in the appropriate subdirectory structure: new-from-template.pl -t FILE [-o DIRECTORY] [- f[d]] [-h] [-?] When you run the script, the XULKit creates a new top-level application directory. In this directory, the script creates the three main package directories, and it places some basic content in each one: a CSS file called mozreg.css in the skins subdirectory, a few XUL files in the content directory (including the overlay that defines a new menu item for the main browser that opens this new application), and localizable data in the mozref.dtd file in the locale subdirectory. In addition to these files, the XULKit script creates contents.rdf files that describe each package, some Makefiles that instruct the Mozilla build process how to integrate this application into the build (which is a later step and not necessary to run the application), and an install.js file that executes the installation of this application when it appears in a XPI. (See Chapter 6 for more information about XPI, Mozilla's cross-platform installation file format.) If you look at Example B-1 xul-app.tpl, which comes with the distribution of new-from-template.pl you can see how easy it is to fill out the basic information and create your own template. Example B-1. Sample application template # load default template for a XUL app include "${top_wizard_dir}templates/xul-app.tpl" # short app name (can not contain spaces.) # until http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75670 is fixed, this needs # to be all lowercase. app_name_short=xulsample # long app name (spaces are OK.) app_name_long=Sample XUL Application (generated from sample.xul-app.tpl) # name as it should appear in the menu app_name_menu=Sample XUL App # version to tell the .xpi installer app_version=1.0 # author, used in various chrome and app registration calls app_author=mozilla.org # size of the package when installed, in kilobytes. # this number is used by the install.js script to check for enough disk space # before the .xpi is installed. You can just guess for now, or put 1, and fix it # in install.js before you make your .xpi file. install_size_kilobytes=1 You can adapt the xul-app.tpl for your own purposes or use the sample.xul-app.tpl that is already filled out. Table B-1 details different options for new-from-template.pl. Table B-1. Options for the new-from-template.pl script Option Description -d Recursively deletes the output directory before starting; requires the -f option. Option Description -f Forces file overwriting in the output directory. -h Displays a description of the specified template with -o. The template will not be processed. The template description is taken from the value of the template_description variable in the template file. template_descriptions provided by the main template file's template file(s) are not displayed. -o DIRECTORY Generates the template into the directory specified by DIRECTORY. If this directory already exists, new- from-template.pl will fail. This failure prevents you from accidentally overwriting an existing application. Use the -f option to continue anyway. Use -fd to force DIRECTORY to be deleted before the template is processed. Option Description -t TEMPLATE Processes the template specified by TEMPLATE. This file is usually in the my/ sub-directory, ending in .tpl. -? Shows usage information and exits. B.1.1.1. XULKit templates Two different application templates come with new-from- template.tpl, each with its own empty and sample versions. Example B-1 shows sample.xul-app.tpl in its entirety. The other template, xpcom-component.tpl, uses information you supply to create the framework for an XPCOM component. As with xul-app.tpl, the template comes with a sample that's already filled out. This script creates an IDL file, a header file, and a stubbed-out CPP file in an application subdirectory structure you can use to begin coding your XPCOM component. In the xpcom-component.tpl, many variables do not need to be changed, but required fields are set aside in the template: # variables the user's .tpl file MUST declare required_variables = ${component_name}, ${implementation_guid}, \ ${interface_name}, ${interface_guid} Using this script, you can fill out a subset of the template with the information XPCOM requires, and XPCOM will generate the basic files you need, as Example B-2 shows. Example B-2. Sample XPCOM component template # include default values include "${top_wizard_dir}templates/xpcom- component.tpl" component_name = SampleComponent implementation_guid = c6793b0c-1dd1-11b2-a246- 92bf95c9d097 interface_name = tstISampleComponent interface_guid = d03ea960-1dd1-11b2-9682- 81ecad6a042a B.1.2. makexpi.pl Script In addition to the template-generating script described above, a second script takes your working application and creates an installable package, or XPI, out of it. This way, you can distribute it to others in the same way the various components of the Mozilla browser are distributed and installed when you use the Mozilla installer. This script, makexpi.pl, takes an application directory as input and generates an XPI archive. It also manifests for various parts of your application, the installation script that goes inside this archive, and even the installation web page itself. While new-from-template.pl is designed to help you start your application, makexpi.pl takes your locally developed application and makes it into a package that can be distributed to other users and installed via the Web. To use makexpi.pl, point it at a configuration file that you have edited to point at your application directory: makexpi.pl [-c <config-file>] [-d] [-r <revision>] [-?] For example, to create a XPI out of your MyApp application directory, in which you created a file called MyApp.conf that defines the variables makexpi.pl needs, execute the script as follows: perl makexpi.pl -c ~/appdev/MyApp/makexpi.conf -r 0.9.9 A makexpi.conf file defines the variables makexpi.pl needs to know about. Example B-3 shows an example of this file. Example B-3. makexpi.conf file # directory where xpi should be created workdir = /home/rginda/src/xulkit/sample-app/ # directory where jar.mn is mndir = ${workdir}/sampleapp/resources/ # location of templatized install.js file installfile = ${xulkit_dir}/templates/xpi/install.js # directory where mozilla's make-jars.pl and friends are mozcfgdir = ${xulkit_dir}/bin/ # name of resulting xpi file xpifile = ${app_name_short}-${revision}.xpi Table B-2 lists the options that are recognized by makexpi.pl. Table B-2. Options for the makexpi.pl script Options Description -c FILE Specifies the configuration file to use. -d Doesn't remake the JAR, but packages the existing contents of the chrome/ directory as an XPI. -r REVISION Specifies the value of the ${revision} variable. This specification overrides any value specified in the configuration file and defaults to "0.01". Typically, this number is used in the install.js script and as part of the XPI filename. -? Shows usage information and exits. When you run the script against the configuration file, you end up with two separate pieces the XPI in which your application and its installation script are stored and a web page that you can post on a server to guide the XPI's installation. As described in Chapter 6 , the web page interacts with the XPI's [...]... template-processed version of install.js that works with your application is included as templates/xpi/install.js as part of the XULKit package B.1 .3 Using XULKit Given these two scripts and the templates that go with them, the XULKit encourages and makes the following application development workflow possible: 1 Fill out a new-from-template.pl template with your application information 2 Run the new-from-template.pl... all in an integrated and easily traceable way These patches can then be submitted back to mozilla.org so that developers working in the source tree can apply and test them See the Section B.2 .2 section later in this appendix for more information about using Patch Maker in this way This process is possible because Mozilla's user interface is written in XUL, JavaScript, and CSS, and interpreted at runtime... the application code 6 Run makexpi.pl against your working application to create an installable package 7 Put the XPI and the web page up on a server to create an install for your application That's it! B.2 Patch Maker 2.0 Patch Maker is a free software program written by Gervase Markham that lets you change and improve Mozilla's user interface by using only a nightly build When you don't build the Mozilla... who develop and maintain code in a CVS tree and make their changes in the tree Build mode makes it possible to produce patches that fix some bugs in Mozilla without downloading and compiling the source B.2 .1 CVS Mode In CVS mode, Patch Maker manages and tracks multiple patches to a bit of software It uses unique tags (patch references such as bug numbers) to separate patches, knows what files are in... You need to use this command for new files so the CVS diff will work properly See the CVS Mode instructions at the Patch Maker web site for instructions on how to use Patch Maker with your source tree B.2 .2 Build Mode The fact that Mozilla's user interface is interpreted at runtime rather than compile time makes it possible to change the interface and see your changes in the browser In Build mode, Patch... Patch Maker's Build mode is a boon for Mozilla developers who do not build the CVS tree, but who want to take part in developing the interface, in the bug-fixing process, and in other aspects of Mozilla development In Mozilla-specific mode, which is triggered when you sit in a Mozilla build install point's chrome directory, you can make patches to Mozilla chrome without using a CVS tree Patch Maker can... combination of characters that make a legal filename on your platform Bug numbers make very good patchrefs You can add and remove files from Patch Maker's internal list of files that comprise the current patch B.2 .2.1 Using Patch Maker in Build mode Here are the steps to use Patch Maker in Build mode (flip the slashes in these paths if you are on Windows): 1 Set up Patch Maker (see the installation instructions . Appendix B. Development Tools- P1 This book describes how to create applications using Mozilla. Generally,. XUL, CSS, XBL, and DTD files) need to be built by hand since no complete ready-made development tools or development applications are available that would