HCL Commerce Build tool prerequisites

Before you begin, you must ensure that all prerequisites for the HCL Commerce Build tool are met. In addition, you must learn about the current build, development, and deployment processes that are used in your project. Learning about the current processes helps in planning the adoption of the HCL Commerce Build tool.

Knowledge prerequisites

You are expected to have knowledge in the following to be able to set up and run the HCL Commerce Build tool:

  • The software configuration management (SCM) that is used by the customization project
  • Remote file transfer protocols such as FTP, SCP, and SFTP
Tip: Skills in Apache Ant and Jython are important if you intend to customize the tool to support functions that is not provided by default.
Understanding your current build, development, and deployment processes helps you better plan the adoption of the HCL Commerce Build tool and make the tool useful. Here are some questions to help you with the process. Keep the answers handy as you progress with the rest of the setup:
  • Is your customization project using an SCM? If so, which one? How do you extract the source code from the SCM?
  • How many server environments are used by your customization project? For example, production, staging, or testing. If you use more than one environment, do the environments have different configuration settings? For example, different data in the database, or different settings in the wc-server.xml file.
  • For each server environment, is your HCL Commerce Enterprise Application (EAR) deployed in a single-server environment or a clustered environment?
  • For each server environment, if you have a remote web server that hosts static web contents for the customization project, how do you deploy the web assets? Can you use remote file transfer methods such as FTP or SCP?

You also need access to the servers in your HCL Commerce topology. You must access these servers for information that is required to set up the build process. If you do not have access to these servers, ensure that an administrator can provide you with this information.

Knowledge resources

Build system prerequisites

It is highly recommended that a server is dedicated to performing builds. In addition, the following requirements must also be met:

  • Match the WebSphere Application Server fix pack and interim fixes on your production environment, with the WebSphere Application Server of your development environment.
  • 2 GB of extra disk space for the HCL Commerce Build tool, temporary files, and build packages that are generated by the build process.
  • Apache Ant 1.7.1 or later installed. To install, download the binary distribution and extract it to a local directory.
  • The client software of the SCM used (for example, CVS, Subversion, or ClearCase) must be installed and available in command line (with the PATH environment set for the SCM client).
  • If you are using the email notification functions, access to an SMTP server is required.

Third-party library dependencies

The HCL Commerce Build tool depends on third-party libraries that you can separately download and set up on the build system. Refer to the following table for examples of potential third-party libraries that you can use.
Note: HCL is not responsible for third-party libraries. HCL does not support issues that are caused by using these libraries.
Follow the instructions to set up the libraries on the build system:
Software Importance Setup instructions
Ant-Contrib Ant-Contrib 1.0b3 Required
  1. Download Ant-Contrib and extract it to a temporary directory.
  2. Copy ant-contrib/ant-contrib-version.jar from the temporary directory to WCB_installdir/lib.
Java Activation Framework (JAF) 1.1.1 Optional: Complete the setup instructions if the mail Ant task is used (for email notification)
  1. Download JAF and extract it to a temporary directory.
  2. Copy jaf-version/activation.jar from the temporary directory to WCB_installdir/lib.
JavaMail 1.4.1 Optional: Complete the setup instructions if the mail Ant task is used (for email notification)
  1. Download JavaMail and extract it to a temporary directory.
  2. Copy javamail-version/mail.jar from the temporary directory to WCB_installdir/lib.
SvnAnt 1.2.1
Note: By default, SvnAnt 1.2.1 supports the SSLv3 protocol only, therefore does not work if WebSphere Application Server has SSLv3 disabled. If you want support for other protocols, you need to investigate alternative solutions.
Optional: Complete the setup instructions if the svn Ant task is used (for source extraction from Subversion) and SSLv3 is enabled.
  1. Download SvnAnt and extract it to a local directory (referred to as SvnAnt_installdir for the rest of the page).
  2. When setting up the source extraction Ant script for Subversion, set the svn.ant.lib.dir property to SvnAnt_installdir/lib WCB_installdir/extract-svn.properties.
The third-libraries are included in the packages that are created by the build process, so they are not required to be downloaded and set up directly on the deployment systems. Refer to the Troubleshooting: Ant tasks and types fail to load or run due to missing classes topic if your build and deployment processes are failing due to Ant task and type loading issues that are related to third-party library dependencies.