Diagrams and visual languages are a great thing, but getting the layout just right for them to be easily understandable can be tedious and time-consuming. The Eclipse Layout Kernel provides a number of layout algorithms as well as an Eclipse-based infrastructure to connect them to editors and viewers. The layout algorithms are plain Java and can thus also be used outside of Eclipse.
The repository's structure is pretty straightforward. We only have a few folders:
build: Contains all the files necessary to build ELK in all its different forms.config: Contains configuration files, such as our Checkstyle configuration.features: Contains all the Eclipse features ELK consists of.plugins: Contains all the plugins ELK consists of.setups: Contains our Oomph setup files.tests: Contains unit tests.
ELK is built using Maven.
To build everything,
first navigate to the build folder.
The build itself is split into two parts. We first need to build and install our meta data language compiler required during the main build, and then trigger the main build itself:
mvn clean install -P elk-meta
mvn clean package
If built on the Eclipse infrastructure, the produced artifacts can be signed by calling the main build as follows:
mvn clean verify -P elk-update-site -P sign