Setting things up

Getting and extracting XWeb

If you should got hold of this manual without actually downloading XWeb you probably want to go to the download page for the XWeb project. If you are not sure if you are using the latest version you might want to check this page, too.

Once you have XWeb you have to extract the archive, another thing you probably already have done when you read this manual. Extracting the archive can be done by the usual tools for your platform, there is no special place where you have to put XWeb and you don't any administrative rights to install or run it.

The environment for XWeb

XWeb comes with all libraries it needs, the only thing you need to have installed to run XWeb is some Java 2 installation with a command line. Java 2 is supported by all Java Runtime Environments (JREs) or Java Development Kits (JDKs) beginning with version number 1.2 (ask Sun why they made this mess with the numbers). The further descriptions will address only Windows and Unix systems, Linux and MacOS X users should be able to follow the instructions for Unix. We assume that you can run the Java interpreter (java) from anywhere in your system. We will refer to the directory where you put XWeb (the one containing subdirectories like bin, examples and so on) as XWEBHOME.

The easiest way to run XWeb is to use the scripts in the bin subdirectory in XWEBHOME. For running these scripts you need to set the environment variable called XWEBHOME to the installation location. How this is done depends on the operating system and shell you use (with the obvious replacement applied):

Windows

set XWEBHOME = c:\path\to\xweb

Unix with bash

export XWEBHOME = /path/to/xweb

Unix with (t)csh

set XWEBHOME /path/to/xweb

If you want to make this change persistent you have to add this information into your default environment, refer to the manual of your system how this can be done. You can also add the bin directory into your path so you can run XWeb from wherever you are without always having to use the full path to the script files.

Running XWeb

Once you have done this, you are ready to run a first test. Go to XWEBHOME and try this call (adjust the file separator to a slash if needed):

bin\wp -preview examples\website\website.xweb

This should compile the XWeb website included as example in the distribution. The results of this process should be in the subdirectory examples\website\output after successful compilation and you can open them in your browser. If you have created the XWeb site you are now ready to start using XWeb.

If this test failed please check all steps again. If you can't figure out what went wrong fell free to use the user mailing list or the website forums from the XWeb project to ask for help -- that's what they are for. Just go to the Sourceforge project pages and follow the links.