The AEM Developer Tools for Eclipse is a Eclipse plugin based on the Eclipse plugin for Apache Sling released under the Apache License 2.
It offers several features that make AEM development easier:
Before using the AEM Developer Tools, you need to:
eclipse.ini
configuration file as described in the Eclipse FAQ.On macOS, you need to right-click on Eclipse.app and then select Show Package Contents in order to find your eclipse.ini
.
Once you have fulfilled the requirements above, you can install the plugin as follows:
Open the AEM Developer Tools Web Site.
Copy the Installation Link.
Note that alternatively you can download an archive instead of using the installation link. This allows offline installation but you will miss automatic update notifications this way.
In Eclipse, open the Help menu.
Click Install New Software.
Click Add….
In Name enter AEM Developer Tools
.
In Location copy the installation URL.
Click Add.
Check both AEM and Sling plugins.
Click Next.
In the Install Details window, click Next again.
Accept the license agreements and click Finish.
Click RestartNow in order to restart Eclipse.
In Eclipse a Perspective determines the actions and views available within a window and enable task-oriented interaction with resources in Eclipse. For more details about Perspective, see the Eclipse documentation.
The AEM Development Tools for Eclipse provides an AEM Perspective that offers you full control over your AEM projects and instances. To open the AEM Perspective:
The AEM Developer Tools for Eclipse comes with a sample, multi-module project that helps you quickly get up to speed with a project setup in Eclipse, as well as serving as a best-practice guide to several AEM features. Learn more about the Project Archetype.
Follow these steps to create the sample project:
In the File > New > Project menu, browse to the AEM section and select AEM Sample Multi-Module Project.
Click Next.
This step might take a moment since m2eclipse needs to scan the archetype catalogs.
Choose com.adobe.granite.archetypes : sample-project-archetype : <highest-number>
from the menu, then click Next.
Provide the following fields for the sample project:
Click Next.
You then configure an AEM server to which Eclipse will connect.
In order to use the debugger feature, you need to have started AEM in debug mode - which can be achieved eg by adding the following to the command line:
-nofork -agentlib:jdwp=transport=dt_socket,server=y,suspend=n,address=10123
Click Finish. The project structure is created.
On a fresh installation (more specifically, when maven dependencies have never been downloaded) you might get the project created with errors. In this case please follow the procedure describe in Resolving Invalid Project Definition.
You can use the New Project feature to create the right structure for you:
Follow the instructions to create a Sample Multi-Module Project and you will have the following projects created for you, which will allow healthy separation of concerns:
PROJECT.ui.apps
for /apps
and /etc
contentPROJECT.ui.content
for /content
that is authoredPROJECT.core
for Java bundles (these will become interesting as soon as you want to add Java code)PROJECT.it.launcher
and PROJECT.it.tests
for integration testsReplace the content of your PROJECT.ui.apps
project with the apps
and etc
folders of your package:
PROJECT.ui.apps
> src
> main
> content
> jcr_root
> apps
.apps
folder and choose Show In > System Explorer.apps
and etc
folders that you should now see and place here the apps
and etc
folders of your content package.PROJECT.ui.apps
project and choose Refresh.Then do the same for the PROJECT.ui.content
and replace its content folder with the one of your package:
PROJECT.ui.content
> src
> main
> content
> jcr_root
> content
.PROJECT.ui.content
project and choose Refresh.Now you have to update the filter.xml
files of these two projects to correspond to the content of your content package. For that, open the META-INF/vault/filter.xml
file of your content package in a separate text/code editor.
filter.xml
file can look:<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<workspaceFilter version="1.0">
<filter root="/apps/foo"/>
<filter root="/apps/foundation/components/bar"/>
<filter root="/etc/designs/foo"/>
<filter root="/content/foo"/>
<filter root="/content/dam/foo"/>
<filter root="/content/usergenerated/content/foo"/>
</workspaceFilter>
As for the content of your package that was split into two projects, you’ll also have to split these filter rules into two and update accordingly the filter.xml
files of the two projects.
In Eclipse, open PROJECT.ui.apps/src/main/content/META-INF/filter.xml
.
Replace the content of the <workspaceFilter>
element with the rules of your package that start with /apps
and /etc
For example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<workspaceFilter version="1.0">
<filter root="/apps/foo"/>
<filter root="/apps/foundation/components/bar"/>
<filter root="/etc/designs/foo"/>
</workspaceFilter>
Then open PROJECT.ui.content/src/main/content/META-INF/filter.xml
.
Replace the rules with the ones of your package that start with /content
.
For example:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<workspaceFilter version="1.0">
<filter root="/content/foo"/>
<filter root="/content/dam/foo"/>
<filter root="/content/usergenerated/content/foo"/>
</workspaceFilter>
Make sure to save all your changes. You can now synchronize that new content to your AEM instance.
In the Servers panel, make sure that your connection is started, and if not start it.
Click on the Clean and Publish icon.
Once done, you should have your package running on your instance, and on save, any change automatically gets synchronized to the instance.
If you wish to re-build a package out of your project, right-click on the PROJECT.ui.apps
or PROJECT.ui.content
and choose Run As -> Maven Install.
You now have a target folder that has been created with your package inside (called e.g. PROJECT.ui.apps-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.zip
).
To resolve invalid dependencies and project definition proceed as follows:
Eclipse downloads the required dependencies. This may take a moment.
The official Apache Sling IDE tooling for Eclipse website provides you with useful information:
The following official Eclipse documentation can help to set up your environment: