Understand “Code” feature at JazzHub

I’m starting to work on my new assignment on emerging technologies. Especially, my main focus this year (2014) is JazzHub. JazzHub offers very rich source control, task tracking and planning,  and coding features on the cloud. To understand these things, it is always good to start from understanding core building block, one by one. One of the core technology of coding is Orion, a web editor from Eclipse project (http://www.eclipse.org/orion).

This was a step to learn Orion basic in my case.

1. Install Node run-time from Nodejs.org ( http://nodejs.org/)
2. Install Orion editor application by npm command.
3. Configure application to edit my code on local PC.

Install the Node run-time is straight forward. So I’ll skip the procedure. After Node run-time is installed, I created the folder c:\Orion, and then issued the following command.

C:\Orion>npm install orion                      1)
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/orion
.
.
c:\Orion> color 3f

It took about several minutes to install Orion application. Then, I check to see if it works. The last command “color 3f” is to reset my command prompt colors.

C:\Orion>node node_modules\orion\server.js
Using workspace: C:\Orion\node_modules\orion\.workspace
Listening on port 8081...

Note Orion application is listening on port 8081, I opened the http://localhost:8081/. Voila ! I see Orion editor now.

But as you can see, the editor is empty. Now, I need to specify source code location . To do this, add “-workspace” option like this example.

C:\Orion>node node_modules\orion\server.js -workspace C:\Workspaces\jazzhub
Using workspace: C:\Workspaces\jazzhub
Listening on port 8081...

Now, I can see whole file/folder structure.

When I click “app.js”, it opens the file in right hand side of web browser.  This is editor area for the coding.

Note that Orion Node version lacks some of the features compared to full Orion editor, but I believe this is good enough to understand basic operation as editor available at JazzHub. I’m going to explorer the Orion editor features in the subsequent blog entries.

1)  I see errors “npm ERR!” in the final stage of application install. However, this can be ignored to understand Orion editor basic.