Apache Forrest™ software is a publishing framework that transforms input from various sources into a unified presentation in one or more output formats. The modular and extensible plug-in architecture of Apache Forrest is based on Apache Cocoon and the relevant industry standards that separate presentation from content. Forrest can generate static documents, or be used as a dynamic server, or be deployed by its automated facility.
Apache Forrest requires that Java 1.5 (or newer) be installed on your system. If you need help with that, then see the Forrest FAQ. Basically, if you are only going to use Forrest as-is then you need only the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) and if you intend to enhance and rebuild Forrest then you need the full JDK.
With a downloaded distribution, Forrest is already built. Just set the environment variables for convenience: FORREST_HOME to refer to this top-level of the distribution and add FORREST_HOME/bin to your PATH. That is it, ready.
The source code is also provided, so you can alter it or extend it, and then re-build by doing 'cd main; build.bat clean; build.bat' (Windows) or 'cd main; ./build.sh clean; ./build.sh' (Unix). If you need more instructions, then see the Building Forrest document.
Forrest is ready to go! Here are some things to try ...
Type 'forrest run' in the site-author directory. You
can then point your browser to
http://localhost:8888/ and view the
Forrest documentation generated dynamically. To stop Apache Forrest just
press Ctrl+C.
Simply type 'forrest' in the site-author directory.
This will render all of the HTML and PDFs for the Forrest documentation
into the build/site/ directory. Point your web browser to the
index.html file there.
Create a new (empty) directory in your home space, cd to it, and type 'forrest seed-sample' which will generate a skeleton directory structure and template XML. If you like, edit the XML in the src/documentation/content/xdocs/ directory. Now type 'forrest' to render your new site, or 'forrest run' to generate a webapp then experiment with editing docs in src/documentation/content/xdocs/ and watch them be instantly rendered.
Type 'forrest -projecthelp' to list the available Forrest commands. NOTE: use the 'forrest.bat' version when running under Cygwin!
Install the Forrestbar a toolbar extension for the Firefox browser. It provides assisted navigation and search of various Forrest resources.
Your distribution has a copy of the Apache Forrest core documentation. Refer to the online or SVN version for the up-to-date documentation.
Release notes are available at etc/RELEASE-NOTES-0.9.txt
People upgrading from previous versions should see the Upgrading notes.
For further information please read the Using Forrest guide. If you have any questions or suggestions, please subscribe to the Forrest mailing lists.
Thanks for using Apache Forrest.
Copyright 2002-2011 The Apache Software Foundation.