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Installing and Configuring the Sentinel Plugin SDK

NETIQ PLUG-IN SDK OVERVIEW

The Novell Plug-in SDK is delivered in two parts: an Eclipse-based Integrated Developer Environment (IDE, a client application that helps you create, edit, and build your plug-ins), and a source code repository that contains the build scripts, templates, and many sample plug-ins (including the source for most of the plug-ins shipped with Sentinel).

The SDK is supported on Linux and Windows, but has been partially tested on MacOS as well. For the most part, platform dependencies are really based on what Eclipse is supported on — virtually all of the build tools use Ant, which is built into Eclipse.

Getting the SDK

Instructions differ slightly for different platforms and whether you already have Eclipse.

Pre-requisites

Before setting up the SDK, review these pre-requisites:

  • [required] The SDK requires Java JDK 6 update 26 or later (but not Java 7)
    • You will need to set JAVA_HOME to point to the new JDK install location.
  • [optional] If you plan to create/edit reports, you will need JasperSoft's iReport
  • [optional, recommended] If you would like PDF documentation to be built for your plug-ins, download and install LibreOffice

When you install iReport and/or LibreOffice, keep track of where they are installed to; the SDK will prompt you for their install locations the first time it needs to invoke them.

The SDK
  1. Download the Eclipse IDE and/or plugin:
  2. Unpack and install the Eclipse IDE:
    • For Windows: Right-click on the installer package and select Install.
    • For Linux/Other: Unpack Eclipse into a directory of your choice (we'll use /opt/eclipse for our example), then unpack the plugin zip file into the dropins directory inside the Eclipse package. The resulting layout should look like:
      /opt/eclipse
      Eclipse install location (paths below start here)
      eclipse
      Binary to start Eclipse
      dropins/com.netiq*/sentinelsdk.jar
      The SDK plug-in for Eclipse.
      • You may also wish to put program launchers for Eclipse on your desktop or in other convenient locations.
  3. Download and unpack the SDK:
    • Static ZIP: download and unpack:
      1. Download the SDK ZIP file (MD5).
      2. Select a directory location to store the SDK, and unpack the ZIP file to that location. For example:
        /plugin-sdk
        Parent directory in which the SDK is unzipped.
        /plugin-sdk/current
        This is the SDK's current branch, which will always have the latest features.
        /plugin-sdk/content
        All the plug-ins go here.
  4. Configure Eclipse:
    1. Start Eclipse (if a Welcome window appears, close it)
    2. (Linux only) In the main Eclipse interface, select Window > Open Perspective > Other > Sentinel.
    3. Click in the Sentinel SDK pane, it will prompt you to select the folder where you unpacked the SDK.
    4. Browse and locate where you unpacked/checked out the SDK - you are looking for the /plugin-sdk/current/sdk folder.
    5. The Sentinel SDK plug-in will load up existing content and present it to you.

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