How to to properly use Eclipse for developing Jira plugins?

[Sorin Sbarnea (Citrix)]

It seems that the documentation for using Eclipse with Atlassian SDK is outdated and incomplete.

Is it possible to properly integrate Atlassian SDK with Jira? If yes, how?

Here is what I a proper integration does mean:

• Eclipse should recognize atlassian libraries (seems to work)
• Source code from Atassian should be accesible in Eclipse
• Being able to use Eclipse build / run / debug commands

I will assume last release versions of all components:

• Eclipse 4.2
• Maven Integration for Eclipse (m2e) 1.2.x
• Maven Integration for Eclipse WTP (m2e-wtp)
• Atlassian SDK 4.0
• Jira 5.2 sources, where to put them so maven/Eclipse will find them?

[Andy Brook [Plugin People]]

Lo, that not a terribly specicic question, yes it possible, but what you have actually tried, sounds like you have a maven setup but then what?

It does work, as well as needed anyway, Ive been using Eclipse with JIRA/Confluence code for oh, 5years+ now. Let us begin:

1. Eclipse / libraries.

Well, its maven, so long os your pom is valid, and you have core-api etc as a dependency, that you get with atlas-create-jira5-plugin, then you're good to go regard resolution, all you need is an internet connection. There are a few remaining libraries that need to be manually deployed due to licensing, but it only needs to be done once per repo.

2. Source code is not provided by Confluence/JIRA in a maven compatible way, it would be neat yes, but no. To use the source code, just unpack the source into a /usr/local/src/atlassian-jira-xxx folder and refer to it within Eclipse, meaning, for debug sessions just add the /usr/local/src/atlassian-jira-xxx folder as containing source, once done that Debug session will be able to resolve and seamlessly step through from your plugin code to JIRA code.

Most of the time, I use a more surgical find . -name Blah.java to locate specific classes, trying to navigate the myriad folders is not a quick task.

3. Build /Run/ debug? Well I build my JIRA5 and Confluence plugins with the maven plugin all the time. It can also be done at the command line. I dont run from eclipse, though I guess by picking the atlassian-sdk installation, you should be able to use the atlassian sdk maven build targets. I generally dont, as the sdk provided test instances starts up automatically as part of integration testing. I actually prefer to have the full application running. Setting up a standalone JIRA/Confluence from scratch can be done with less than 5 minutes. Having available launchable environments for just about every version is quite handy too.