Introduction

It is necessary to build the software before you can use it. If you downloaded the project to your machine and unzipped the file, then you obtained a directory containing the source code. The source code is a human readable ^[1] specification of the software which can not be executed by a machine e.g. your computer. The source code has to be transformed in a representation which can be understood by the machine. This process of transforming some source code is called "compilation". Compiling all source files of the whole project is called "building the project". As a result of building the project you'll receive an artifact called jar. This jar is needed to run the Excel Converter.This document describes the steps you have to complete to build the project.

Setting up the SDK

First of all you need to set up a Java SDK to build the project. The Java SDK is the software containing the compiler. To set up the Java SDK you need to install the software and then set the environment variable JAVA_HOME to the location where you installed the Java SDK. Here you can find some basic instructions how to install OpenJDK. When installing the Java SDK you should pay attention to not install a JRE (Java Runtime Environment), because this is not intended to compile source code, instead of that it is used to run the compiled artifacts.

Setting up Maven

After you installed the Java SDk you have a compiler available which could be used to compile the source code of the project. Since the project comprises many source files it would be a cumbersome task to compile the whole project, because it's difficult to call the compiler by hand. To simplify the process of building the whole project there are available so called build tools. The build tool used to build this project is called Maven, so as the next step you've to set up Maven.

Just download the latest Maven 3.x binary zip from the Maven download site . You'll receive a zip file which you have to unzip somewhere on your hard disk. Then you need to set the environment variable M2_HOME to point to the location where you unzipped Maven. Furthermore you have to add ${M2_HOME}/bin to your PATH to be able to call Maven from the command line. To verify that you installed Maven correctly open a shell and enter the command

mvn -v

Building

TODO

mvn clean:packge
mvn site
mvn assembly:single

Running the Excel Converter

Here you find instructions on running the Excel Converter.