Getting your stuff together

• If you haven't already, download and install the latest version of Apache Ant .
• Get and install a CVS client (see here for information on CVS).
• Check out the modules avalon, avalon-excalibur, avalon-logkit and jakarta-site
• Use ant to build the various projects: avalon, logkit, excalibur fortress. If something goes wrong, run ant in verbose mode using the -v option and send the output to the avalon-user mailing list. Someone'll help you out.

Or, if you hate CVS, get a nightly build.

Hello, world!

You just built fortress, its dependencies, and its examples from cvs in the previous step. This enables you to (finally!) run a HelloWorld demo. change into the bin directory for the examples and run the scripts there (runswing.sh is a nice one).

Well, duh! So now what?

Play with the examples

After looking at the sources to the examples provided and figuring out what goes on (if you're an IDE person, run the examples in your IDE debugger! If you develop servlets, be sure to try to get the servlet example to run), the real cool but also the hard part begins.

Converting from ECM

If you're looking at converting an existing avalonized application that uses ECM, well, we want to write a tool that does this all but automatically for you. Not there yet though.

Convert a non-avalon application

The first thing you want to do is to create a fortress instance inside your applications main loop or bootstrap class. The second thing you want to do is identify the building blocks of your application, and transform them into avalon components (by making them passive, and extending the avalon framework lifecycle interfaces). Then, create the fortress configuration files to tell it about those new components, and transfer control over those components from your bootstrap code to fortress. Done!

Okay, so it may not be so simple as it sounds, but that is the general idea. Just get started, and come and talk to us on the mailing list when you get lost.

Creating a new application

Start with the example that fits your enviroment (console, GUI or embedded), and simply start hacking from there. You'll want to think about the various tasks your app serves, and how to decompose your app into components that fit those tasks. The Developing with Avalon paper talks you through this.

Mastering Fortress

The best way to learn about avalon and its concepts is to build your own container. Try and plug in your own implementations of the different parts of fortress, like a different ComponentHandler. Once you get a hang of it, come and join the avalon folks in their quest for the holy grail of software architecture!