So what's up with this stuff?

[endres]

I was expecting to download these tools and be off and running. I didn't expect such frustration and aggravation from the very start. For example: the template projects, the mvc one in this case, will not build without extra modification to the pom file. Another example: the installed servers wont start because of errors in their setup and, after fixing those, of class not found exceptions. A similar example: going with a fresh install of tomcat wont work because of an exception parsing root-context.xml. I feel like having the first 2 of these examples work out of the box is not asking too much. Is it?

[Martin Lippert]

Hi!

I am sorry to hear that you had such a bad experience. Its unclear to me how that could happen since the scenarios you describe are all working nicely for me. Anyway, lets try to figure out what went wrong with your installation and I am sure we will find the solution for this and provide you with a great experience using STS.

So please tell me what OS you are running on, which version of STS you downloaded and how you installed it (installer or ZIP). And maybe some steps to reproduce one of those problems you describe to start with. Ok?

-Martin

[endres]

I've tried on Linux, Mac, and Windows (XP). This morning I started over fresh with Mac OS X (Cocoa 64 bit) download: http://download.springsource.com/rel...-installer.dmg and went through these steps:

1. Downloaded Mac OS X (Cocoa, 64bit): springsource-tool-suite-2.6.0.SR1-e3.6.2-macosx-cocoa-x86_64-installer.dmg
2. Installed but put in Applications Folder instead of the default
3. Started the tools
4. Chose Open Dashboard
5. Closed Task List and Outline
6. Clicked Spring Template Project from Dashboard and chose Simple Spring Utility Project
7. Let it download what it needed
8. Created with SimpleUtility as the name and org.avetec.spring.simpleutility as the top-level package
9. Waiting for the workspace to build
10. Got this error: Could not calculate build plan: Could not find artifact com.springsource.bundlor:com.springsource.bundlor. maven:pom:1.0.0.RELEASE in Codehaus (http://repository.codehaus.org/)

I know from searching around the web that I can fix that error by adding pluginRepositories in the profile section of pom.xml. Note that I also tried mvn install as well with the same error.

[endres]

1. <profile>
   Added this to pom.xml
   <id>spring</id>
   <pluginRepositories>
   <pluginRepository>
   <id>repository.springsource.com.s3.amazonaws.com </id>
   <name>Fix repository for missing bundlor</name>
   <url>http://repository.springsource.com.s3.amazonaws.com/maven/bundles/release</url>
   </pluginRepository>
   </pluginRepositories>
   <repositories>
   <repository>
   <id>com.springsource.repository.bundles.release</id>
   <name>SpringSource Enterprise Bundle Repository - SpringSource Bundle Releases</name>
   <url>http://repository.springsource.com/maven/bundles/release</url>
   </repository>
   <repository>
   <id>com.springsource.repository.bundles.external </id>
   <name>SpringSource Enterprise Bundle Repository - External Bundle Releases</name>
   <url>http://repository.springsource.com/maven/bundles/external</url>
   </repository>
   </repositories>
   </profile>
   
   
2. mvn test -Pspring
3. Downloaded a bunch of stuff with no errors
4. Today it didn't solve the problem but yesterday it did on Ubuntu

[Martin Lippert]

Hey!

Sorry for not coming back to this earlier. Did you solve the problem in the meantime? Or do you still need some help here?

-Martin

[endres]

Hey Martin. Here's where I am right now. I just came back to it today really.

1. I downloaded the latest and fixed problems with the permGen errors. What's in the readme doesn't work.
2. The test cases have failures in them, so I ignored them and did an install anyway. At a quick glance they seem like errors in the test cases themselves
3. I followed what's on http://blog.springsource.com/2009/03...lding-spring-3. Everything imported (into Eclipse), but org.springframework.oxm doesn't build.
4. Then I went to follow the Hello World tutorial or read me on how to use it but there doesn't seem to be one. I did find what seems like one for $2790. I found the Green Beans articles. Lots of stuff that gives snippets on how cool and easy it is to use, but not step 1. I just checked out greenhouse, so we'll see.

I'm left at the same place. I've downloaded a ton of stuff that doesn't pass its own tests and doesn't really tell me how to use it. Keeps my confidence level super low.

Maybe I'm getting too old and cynical, eh?

[endres]

I installed the Spring Source tools into Eclipse. Then I created an MVC project from one of the templates. Errors from the start. I was expecting it to be good to go right out of the box. It's what I would do.

With my 100% failure rate I feel that I need someone to walk me through the process in minute detail. Something like first grab the mouse, then move it, use your finger to press the button, etc. There's something fundamental I'm missing.

[Gr3y]

I was expecting to download these tools and be off and running. I didn't expect such frustration and aggravation from the very start. For example: the template projects, the mvc one in this case, will not build without extra modification to the pom file. Another example: the installed servers wont start because of errors in their setup and, after fixing those, of class not found exceptions. A similar example: going with a fresh install of tomcat wont work because of an exception parsing root-context.xml. I feel like having the first 2 of these examples work out of the box is not asking too much. Is it?

Lol, these are the exact problems I've been having using these tools.
I would say that this stuff should work out of the box. Is there any QA department? Are they on vacation?

I've had additional problems though. In the "Markers" pane, I have 2 Java Exceptions of unknown location.
Running a clean system, with jdk1.6.0_26. I also installed Maven 3.0.3 and setup STS to use it, because the supplied 2.2 threw some warnings about not being able to download something.
3.0.3 seemed to fix it.

This doesn't exactly inspire confidence, and I'm beginning to wonder if using Spring might be trouble in the long run.
I'm new to this environment, and I would rather not have to spend additional hours trying to get STS to work out of the box.

[Andrew Eisenberg]

This not being my area, I am not sure of why you are seeing the error markers. However, I spoke to the developers on this project and they should answer soon.

[Gr3y]

Mr Eisenberg, I thank you.