Kitty is a command line JMX Client written in Groovy.
Kitty is currently an Apache Incubator project, and is growing as a JMX administration utility for applications which support JMX. Kitty is an excellent project to begin contributing to an open source project, and filing a need amongst Java developers for a handy utility for managing and monitoring applications through JMX in a way that is intuitive and user friendly.
What you will learn in this document
In this document you will learn how to set up your development environment so that you can begin developing for Kitty. Kitty is currently a very simple project to work on, it is written in Groovy, which is a fun language to write code in, and a great opportunity for those looking to begin contributing to an open source project which has immediate usefulness.
Finding something to work on
There are many things to be worked on for the Kitty project. The best way to find out what needs to be done on the project (or any other ASF Incubator project), is to send a message out to the dev mailing list. You can subscribe to the Kitty-dev mailing list by sending a blank email to kitty-dev-subscribe@incubator.apache.org. Then you will receive a confirmation message once you are subscribed to the list. If you don't want to subscribe, but want to send a message to the list, you can simply send a message to kitty-dev@incbuator.apache.org and it will be moderated by the mailing list administrators.
If you are interested in being a committer for the project, see http://www.apache.org/dev/new-committers-guide.html.
Also, you may investigate the open issues for Kitty in the ASF JIRA to find out which tasks and bugs need to be worked on. This is also a great starting point for getting involved and contributing to the project: Kitty JIRA
Setting up your IDE
It is suggested to download the Eclipse IDE to begin working on Kitty. This allows you to keep better track of the source code of the project and integrates with Subversion. You may use any editor or IDE you choose, in this example, Eclipse is used.
Step 1) Download Eclipse from http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ . I have chosen the "Eclipse IDE for Java Developers" Step 2) Install the Subversive Plugin for Subversion integration by following the instructions at
NOTE: You will need to change the update site for the Subversive connectors, if you don't do this it is likely that the connector installation will fail. You should use http://download.eclipse.org/technology/subversive/0.7/update-site/ for the connectors update site. See http://www.eclipse.org/subversive/downloads.php "Is it right that version 0.7 is newer than versions 1.1.0 and 1.0.0, which I previously used?" in the FAQs for a further explanation. If you run into trouble here, send a message to the mailing list and someone will help you.
Step 3) Append or use the following .subversion/config file to properly set your Subversion configuration for ASF/Kitty use.
Step 4) Download Groovy from http://groovy.codehaus.org/Download Step 5) Install the Groovy-Eclipse plugin by following the instructions at http://groovy.codehaus.org/Eclipse+Plugin under "How to Install"
Step 6) Navigate to SVN Repositories by clicking the SVN Repositories button in the top right-hand corner or by going to the menu: "Window->Show View->SVN Repositories"
Step 7) Click the menu: "New->Repository Location"
Step 8) Enter https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/incubator/kitty/ for the URL. Leave all other fields blank, unless you are a committer.
NOTE: Unless you are a committer, you will be unable to commit changes through SVN. If you'd like to be a committer, send a message out to the kitty-dev@incubator.apache.org mailing list, our simply attach a patch to the mailing list and one of the committers will check it in. For guidelines on submitting a patch: see http://subversion.apache.org/docs/community-guide/general.html#patches.
Now you will have set up your development environment for working with Kitty. You will now need to set up and configure Apache Ant to build the project.
Building and running Kitty
To build the project, you will need to do update your build patch to include the location of the Groovy binaries. Switch that he Navigator view by going to the menu "Window->Show View->Navigator".
Step 1) Change the line in the Ant build.xml which shows:
to point to the properly installed path of your Groovy ./lib directory.
Step 2) Right click the buid.xml file and select "Run As->Ant build"
You should now see a message in the Eclipse console stating: "BUILD SUCCESSFUL"
To run Kitty:
Step 1) Navigate to src/org/apache/kitty/
Step 2) Right click on CmdShell.groovy
Step 3) Select "Run As->Groovy script"
Now you will see Kitty running in the Eclipse Console. Type help to see a list of available commands. Now you may use and test Kitty!
NOTE: This document is continuously being improved. For suggestions on updating this document, send a message to the kitty-dev mailing list. Patches are welcome for the site as well.