Installation

On this page you find install instructions for Alida in Java.
For information about the C++ implementation refer to the C++ page to be found here.

Installing and Using Alida's Java version

There are different ways how to get and install Alida which are listed and explained below. Just select the option fitting to your needs and follow the instructions.

Trying Alida: Alida's binary distribution

If you would like to see how Alida, its operator runners and Grappa work the easiest is to download and run its binary distribution from the Maven repository server: Alida 2.7 on Maven repository server

Download the binary zip archive from the Artifacts section and extract the zip file to a directory of your choice.
Then change to that directory of the extracted files.

You can start Grappa (on Linux systems) using

tcsh ./runAlida.tcsh 

or

bash ./runAlida.bash

If you grant execute permissions to these scripts you can start them directly, e.g.

./runAlida.tcsh

If you in addition modify the variable ALIDA_HOME in these scripts you can start them from any directory.

To run the graphical user interface to configure and start operators you may use

./runAlida.tcsh guioprunner

The command line interface is invoked, e.g., via

./runAlida.tcsh oprunner -h

which displays the help message.

Using Alida as a library in your own code

For using Alida as a library in your own code the most easy way to fulfill all requirements and dependencies is to use Maven.
Since Alida version 2.4 we offer a template Maven project which you can use as a starting point for your work:

• Maven-Template Project: zip
  

Just unzip the archive to a directory of your choice and follow the instructions in the README file included.
The project already defines all repositories and dependencies required to use Alida's functionality.

Building Alida from the Github sources and Contributing

If you would like to build Alida by yourself, e.g., for modifying or extending core functionality you should build and install Alida from the Github sources.

Building Alida from the sources

For compiling Alida you need to have installed the following software on your computer:

• JDK 1.8
• Maven 3.x or higher

For building Alida follow the instructions below:

• clone Alida's repository on Github:

  git clone https://github.com/alida-hub/alida.git

• compile the sources by running Maven as follows:

   mvn compile 

• for running included unit tests run:

   mvn test 

• to package a new release or snapshot run:

   mvn package 

Further information about how to build and package sources using Maven can be found on Maven's webpage.
Particulary the section Maven in 5 Minutes might be of interest for beginners.

If you prefer to use an IDE like Eclipse you can easily import the Alida project into your workspace.
Note that you need to install the 'm2e' extensions in Eclipse first.

Given that Maven is correctly installed in Eclipse just select 'File' -> 'Import...' and then under 'Maven' the item 'Existing Maven projects',
and select as root directory for the import the directory to where you cloned Alida's sources.
For all other settings you can just stick to the defaults.

Contributing to Alida

The easiest way to contribute to Alida is by making use of pull requests on Github.

You can find documentation about pull requests and how to create them on Github.