Apache Forrest

status.xml
(status of the project and community)
module.xml
(extended Gump descriptor of the software module)
build.xml
(main build file)
properties.xml
(properties used for building the project)

Documentation
(run "build site" first)
Local build number
(how many builds have been done locally)

Project Site
(online)
Auto-generated project sites
(online)

What is this?

Forrest is an XML standards-oriented project documentation framework based on Apache Cocoon, providing XSLT stylesheets and schemas, images and other resources. Forrest uses these to render the XML source content into a website via command-line, robot, or a dynamic web application.

What do I do now?

You are using a 'source' distribution of Forrest. You need to first build Forrest, by typing

build.bat

(Windows) or

./build.sh

(Unix).

This will create a "shbat" distribution in

build/dist/shbat

, or whever the

dist-shbat.dir

property is set to. You should now add the

build/dist/shbat/bin

directory to your PATH variable.

If you have done this correctly, you are now ready to test out Forrest! Here are three things to try:

Render the Forrest website -- simply type
```
forrest
```
in this (Forrest's source distribution) directory. It should chug along for a good while (Forrest's site is quite large), and render the HTML and PDFs to
```
build/site
```
.
Run a webapp of the Forrest site -- type
```
forrest run
```
in this directory. You can then point your browser to http://localhost:8888/, and view the Forrest website generated dynamically. Experiment with editing docs in
```
build/webapp/content/xdocs
```
, and watch them be (nearly) instantly rendered.
Generate your own site -- create a new (clean) directory, and type
```
forrest seed
```
. This will generate a skeleton directory structure and template XML. If you like, edit the XML in
```
src/documentation/content/xdocs
```
. Now type
```
forrest
```
to render your new site, or
```
forrest run
```
to generate a webapp.

For further information, please read our Getting Started guide. If you have any questions or suggestions, please subscribe to the forrest-dev mailing list.

Thanks for using Apache Forrest!