Installation of binary distribution of Java application excelExporter

Please note, that this installation step is shared with the installation of the DBC code generator. You don’t need to do this twice, if you are going to use both tools.

excelExporter, the auxiliary code generator from project comFramework is a stand-alone Java application. An installed Java runtime environment of version 8 (aka 1.8) or higher is a prerequisite of running it. If such a Java RTE is in your system’s search path for executables then you can skip this step. Even setting environment variable COMFRAMEWORK_JAVA_HOME (see below) is not a must; if you don’t do then the Java executable from the search path will be used.

If no suitable Java RTE is available in your system’s search path, then you can get an appropriate Java Open JDK at https://jdk.java.net/23/ (Nov 2024). Download the archive (e.g., https://download.java.net/java/GA/jdk23.0.1/c28985cbf10d4e648e4004050f8781aa/11/GPL/openjdk-23.0.1_windows-x64_bin.zip for Windows x64 users).

Unzip the Java archive to a location of your choice and consider adding this location to the operating system’s search path. Either the Java executable, java.exe, needs to be in the Windows search path or the Java installation path — where bin\java.exe is located in — is assigned to a new environment variable COMFRAMEWORK_JAVA_HOME. Given, you’re Java executable would be c:\ProgramFiles\jdk-23.0.1\bin\java.exe, then you could issue the command:

from a Command Prompt window. Please note, that the proposed command will install the new environment variable only for the current user. A machine wide setting by putting /m at the end of the command line requires administrator rights.

If not already done for the installation of the DBC code generator, you would now unzip the comFramework archive to a location of your choice. Installation paths containing blanks must be avoided.

The installation path of excelExporter, comFramework’s auxiliary code generator, (i.e., a path like …​\comFramework\excelExporter, where folder dist is located in) is assigned to a new environment variable EXCELEXPORTER_HOME. The script that launches the Java application, will set the Java class path based on this root directory. Java will fail to locate the required jar files if the environment variable is not properly set. Given, you’d copied the archive’s contents to the folder c:\ProgramFiles, then you could issue the command:

from a Command Prompt window. Please note, that the proposed command will install the new environment variable only for the current user. A machine wide setting by putting /m at the end of the command line requires administrator rights.

The application launcher is a Windows script named excelExporter.cmd. It is located in the folder excelExporter\dist. It’s a very simple script and Linux and Mac OS users won’t have any problems to write the same script in their respective shell script languages. The script becomes most useful if the folder dist is added to the system search path (i.e., environment variable PATH would be extended by c:\ProgramFiles\comFramework\excelExporter\dist in the example case above). Consider typing:

in a shell window. Please note, that the proposed command will extend the Windows search path only for the current user. A machine wide setting by putting /as instead of /au requires administrator rights.

Alternatively, the tiny script excelExporter.cmd can be copied to all locations where excelExporter is about to be used.

If you decided to extend your PATH variable then you should test your installation by opening a new shell window — the Windows configuration settings made by commands setx and pathman are not adopted by the shell instance, which they are submitted from. In the new shell, cd to an arbitrary working directory and submit the command:

The application should start up and it should respond with its usage text.

From the same shell, cd to sample firstSample, i.e., folder …​\comFramework\excelExporter\samples\firstSample. Type:

runFirstSample is a small wrapper script with the command line appropriate for this sample. excelExporter is run and should properly reproduce the generated file output.txt, which already was in the ZIP archive. The generated text output is written to the shell window, too.