d.tools Installation Instructions:

Prerequisites

d.tools is written in Java as a plugin for the Eclipse universal tool platform. You will need to install both Java and Eclipse (including an add-on called the Graphical Editing Framework), which are not distributed with d.tools, in order to run the d.tools application. While Eclipse and Java exist on multiple platforms, d.tools has only been tested on Windows XP Pro systems and may need massaging to run on other operating systems.

  1. Install Java 2 Platform Standard Edition (J2SE 1.5.0 or higher).
  2. Install Eclipse SDK 3.2.* or 3.3 and the corresponding Graphical Editing Framework (GEF). The GEF version has to match your Eclipse version. The GEF project maintains its own installation instructions.
  3. Newer versions of d.tools (>=0.2.0) also require the JavaMediaFramework (JMF) to be installed. We are currently running d.tools with JMF 2.1.1e.

There are separate installation paths depending on wether you want to work with d.tools as a user, or modify d.tools as a developer. Choose from either:

Users: Installing and testing the d.tools Plugin

  1. Close all running instances of Eclipse. Download the latest binary+source release version of dtools-eclipse-plugin as a zip file from our sourceforge project page. Unzip the file into your Eclipse plugin directory. For example, if you installed Eclipse into c:\eclipse, your plugin directory is c:\eclipse\plugins and d.tools should be unzipped into c:\eclipse\plugins\edu.stanford.hci.dtools_*\ (the correct pathnames starting at plugin\ are stored in the zip file).
  2. Restart Eclipse. Verify that d.tools is running by selecting Help->About Eclipse SDK->Plug-in details. You should see an entry with Plug-in id edu.stanford.hci.dtools. If you don't, try the following:
    1. Start Eclipse with command line option " -clean". Check again. If the d.tools plugin is still not visible:
    2. Go to your Eclipse installation directory and delete everything in directory configuration\ except for the file config.ini. Restart. If the d.tools plugin is still not visible:
    3. Go to your Eclipse installation directory and delete everything in directory configuration\ including the file config.ini. Replace it with config.ini from the original eclipse SDK zip file.
  3. To start working with the d.tools graphical editors, create a new "simple" project (File menu->New->Project...->Simple project). Then add a d.tools Statechart File (File->New->Other->d.tools->d.tools Statechart) and a d.tools Device File (File->New->Other->d.tools->d.tools Device. Both filenames have to match before the extension (i.e., dtools1.d expects a matching dtools1.dvc file and vice versa).
  4. To see a tabular list of editable properties of elements within d.tools and to see the asset library, which supports drag and drop of images into the statechart and device editors, choose Window menu-> Show view -> Other... -> Basic -> Property view and Window->Showview->Other...->d.tools->d.tools Asset Library.

This concludes the user installation instructions.

Users: updating the d.tools Plugin

  1. Close Eclipse
  2. Remove the d.tools plugin directory from your Eclipse installation. For example, if you installed Eclipse into c:\eclipse, your plugin directory is c:\eclipse\plugins and you should delete the folder c:\eclipse\plugins\edu.stanford.hci.dtools_*\.
  3. The install the new version of the d.tools plugin by following the regular installation instructions

Developer access to d.tools source-code

  1. Download the latest source via CVS. We recommend doing this through Eclipse's integrated repository explorer. Use server name d-tools.cvs.sourceforge.net, repository location /cvsroot/d-tools, anonymous login with pserver authentication. Download the HEAD of module dtools-eclipse-plugin.
  2. In this configuration, your normal Eclipse workspace will load without the d.tools plug-in. From within Eclipse, you start a second Eclipse workspace that then loads d.tools. This way you can debug the plug-in running in the second workspace from the first workspace. With the dtools-eclipse-plugin project open, Select the menu Run->Run... Create a new "Eclipse Application" configuration. In the Main tab, specify the directory of its workspace data (e.g., c:\dtools-runtime). In the Plug-ins tab make sure that the box next to edu.stanford.hci.dtools is checked. Hit Run at the bottom right of the form and you should get a new Eclipse workspace after a few seconds. In that workspace, verify that d.tools is running by selecting Help->About Eclipse SDK->Plug-in details. You should see an entry with Plug-in id edu.stanford.hci.dtools. If you're part of the core d.tools development team, please send bjoern your sourceforge account and then check out with ssh authentication.
  3. See the "Starting a new d.tools project" page for information on starting to work with d.tools.

Hardware installation

If you are using a new Crumb128-based d.tools interface board, you will need to install the "CP210x USB Driver", which will give you a virtual COM port. The latest version can be found on this chip45.com page. After installation, check the assigned COM port number in your Windows Control Panel. In Eclipse, enter this port number in Window->Preferences->d.tools Preferences.

If you are using serial port hardware communication and have trouble accessing your serial port (console reports "COMx not found"), copy the files comm.jar and javax.comm.properties from the edu.stanford.hci.dtools_*\external-jars\ directory into the lib\ directory of your JRE.

If you would like to use Phidgets hardware with d.tools, please see the Phidgets page.

Last updated: August 25, 2007

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