Getting Started
To obtain Aperture, you can download the latest release at SourceForge.net or checkout and compile the latest version directly from SVN. While the project is still in alpha stage, the latter will most likely give you the best code to work with. Once you are done with this, you can read the Tutorials, Documentation or have a look at the [ApertureExampleApplications]
Download the latest release
The latest Aperture release can be downloaded at http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=150969.
Unzip the zip or tar.gz file to a location of your choice and open the created folder. The lib directory contains the Aperture jar files as well as third-party jar files and their licenses.
For running Aperture you will at least need the
- aperture-core-<version>.jar (version 1.5.0 and above),
- aperture-runtime-onejar-<version>.jar (versions 1.3.0 and 1.4.0)
- aperture-<version>.jar in releases up to 1.2.0).
The jars in the example-jars folder (or the single aperture-examples-<version>.jar file in releases up to 1.2.0) is only needed when using the Aperture example classes. The other jars in the lib folder (or those in required-libs in releases 1.3.0 and 1.4.0) are used by Extractor and Crawler implementations. If you don't use them, you will probably not need them. Versions up to 1.4.0 also contained a src.zip file contains all Aperture source code, including examples and JUnit tests. With version 1.5.0 we don't ship the source code with the release, it can always be checked out from the SVN tag.
The releases 1.3.0 and 1.4.0 gave you the opportunity to cherry-pick the modules you need by choosing them from the lib/aperture-jars folder. This allowed you to choose your modules at wish. With version 1.5.0 we returned to a single-jar codebase. See MavenDependency for more information or ask on aperture-dev if you have questions about this.
The bin directory contains batch files and shell scripts for starting the command line and GUI example applications. These include a file system crawler, an IMAP mail folder crawler and a file inspector, showing you the output of Aperture's MIME type identification and full-text and metadata extraction. Note that there are also various commandline examples whose code is a lot simpler to understand. Refer to [ApertureExampleApplications] wiki page for more information.
Aperture requires Java 5.
Add Aperture as a maven dependency: see the MavenDependency page
Checkout from SVN (current version, based on maven)
The source of Aperture is kept in an SVN repository on sourceforge and dependency management is done using maven2.
The current trunk resides here:
http://aperture.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/aperture/aperture/trunk
(It's not to be confused with the old trunk which used to live at http://aperture.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/aperture/trunk/aperture It has been moved to a branch residing at http://aperture.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/aperture/aperture/branches/aperture_old_ant_trunk/ should anyone need to use it)
You need to checkout the aperture/trunk, and type 'mvn install' in the root of the codebase. This assumes you have maven 2 installed.
svn checkout http://aperture.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/aperture/aperture/trunk aperture mvn install
Then go to assembly/main/target and you'll see the aperture-<version> folder which will contain the release files. All of this is documented in the BUILD.txt file at the root of the codebase.
The Aperture team uses Eclipse to work with the codebase. The recommended way to import the code into an eclipse workspace is by invoking the eclipse maven plugin in the main folder
mvn eclipse:eclipse
And later import the generated projects.
- Click the File menu
- Click "Import"
- Expand the "General" tree
- Click "Existing projects into workspace"
- In the "Import" dialog, click on "Browse" and navigate to the top folder of the source tree
- You should see the Aperture projects in the "Projects" field
- Make sure all Aperture projects are selected (click "Select All")
- Click "Finish"
We do not recommend the m2eclipse pluging for eclipse. Aperture consists of so many modules, and the dependencies between them are so complex, that the m2eclipse becomes unresponsive. Every single change in a pom file triggers a recomputation of all dependencies in all projects which takes minutes to complete.
Checkout from SVN (old version, outdated)
This section is outdated, use only if you need to work with an old legacy version of aperture. Remember that the old, ant-based trunk has been moved to a branch which now resides at
http://aperture.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/aperture/aperture/branches/aperture_old_ant_trunk/
These instructions also apply to code for all previous releases up to (and including) 1.2.0. For releases 1.3.0 and 1.4.0 see the instructions above.
Once checked out, you can use the Ant build script in Aperture's root directory to build the project. Notable targets are:
- compile: compiles all classes, excluding unit tests and example classes (use compile.examples and compile.test for that).
- jar: creates the core Aperture jar file (likewise, use jar.examples and jar.test for the other two).
- dist: creates and gathers all jar files and javadocs in build/dist. All unit tests are also applied.
- release: combines the dist results with all other required files (scripts, licenses, ...) and puts them in build/release.
- package: creates .zip and .tar.gz files of the release results (used to created the dowloadable releases).
- test: run all JUnit tests.
- clean: removes all generated files.
The recommended Java version to run Aperture is Java 1.5.0.
The precise minimum Ant requirements are currently unknown; the build files have been tested with Ant 1.6.5, older versions may or may not work.
Now that you have checked out Aperture, continue with the Tutorials and the Documentation. You could also have a look at the Aperture Example Applications
