Requirements
Compiling the tool
- Fetching the sources
- Building the executable
- Executing the fresh build
Building arara

arara is a Kotlin application licensed under the New BSD License, a verified GPL-compatible free software license, and the source code is available in the project repository at GitLab. This chapter provides detailed instructions on how to build our tool from source.

Requirements

In order to build our tool from source, we need to ensure that our development environment has the minimum requirements for a proper compilation. Make sure the following items are available:

arara can be easily built from source, provided that the aforementioned requirements are available. The next section presents the compilation details, from repository cloning to a proper Java archive generation.

One tool to rule them all
For the brave, there is the Software Development Kit Manager, an interesting tool for managing parallel versions of multiple software development kits on most Unix based systems. In particular, this tool provides off the shelf support for several Java Development Kit vendors and versions, as well as most recent versions of Gradle.

Personally, I prefer the packaged versions provided by my favourite Linux distribution (Fedora), but this tool is a very interesting alternative to set up a development environment with little to no effort.

Compiling the tool

Fetching the sources

First and foremost, we need to clone the project repository into our development environment, so we can build our tool from source. The cloning will create a directory named arara/ within the current working directory, so remember to first ensure that you are in the appropriate directory. For example:

$ mkdir git-projects
$ cd git-projects

Run the following command in the terminal to clone the arara project:

$ git clone https://gitlab.com/islandoftex/arara.git

Wait a couple of seconds (or minutes, depending on your Internet connection) while the previous command clones the project repository hosted at GitLab. Be mindful that this operation pulls down every version of every file for the history of the project. Fortunately, the version control system has the notion of a shallow clone, which is a more succinctly meaningful way of describing a local repository with history truncated to a particular depth during the clone operation. If you want to get only the latest revision of everything in our repository, run the following command in the terminal:

$ git clone https://gitlab.com/islandoftex/arara.git --depth 1

This operation is way faster than the previous one, for obvious reasons.

Building the executable

Unix terminals typically start at HOME as working directory, so, if you did not cd to another directory (as in the earlier example), the newly cloned arara/ directory is almost certain to be accessible from that level. Now, we need to navigate to the directory named arara/. Run the following command in the terminal:

$ cd arara

The previous command should take us inside the arara/ directory of our project, where the source code and the corresponding build file are located. Let us make sure we are in the correct location by running the following command in the terminal:

$ ls build.gradle.kts
build.gradle.kts

Great, we are in the correct location! From the previous output, let us inspect the directory contents. The cli/ directory, as the name suggests, contains the source code of the main command-line application organized in an established package structure, whereas build.gradle.kts is the corresponding Gradle build file written to efficiently compile the project. In order to build our tool, run the following command in the terminal:

$ ./gradlew :cli:build

Gradle is based around the central concept of a build life cycle. The compile phase, as the name suggests, compiles the source code of the project using the underlying Java compiler. After compiling, the code can be packaged, tested and run. The build target actually compiles, tests and packages our tool. Afterwards, you will have a cli/build/libs/ directory with multiple JAR files, one containing with-deps. That file is ready to run as it bundles all dependencies. Subsequent builds will be significantly faster than the first build because they do not fetch dependencies and rely on a build cache. Finally, after some time, Gradle will output the following message as result (please note that the entire compilation and packaging only took 4 seconds on my development machine due to an existing local cache):

BUILD SUCCESSFUL in 4s
15 actionable tasks: 15 up-to-date

Executing the fresh build

Now, let us move the resulting Java archive file from that particular directory to our current directory. Run the following command in the terminal (please note that the Java archive file was also renamed during the move operation):

$ mv cli/build/libs/arara-cli-with-deps-*.jar arara.jar

Now, our current directory contains the final arara.jar Java archive file properly built from source. This file can be safely distributed and deployed, as seen later on, in Deploying. You can also test the resulting file by running the following command in the terminal:

$ java -jar arara.jar
Usage: arara [OPTIONS] file...

    __ _ _ __ __ _ _ __ __ _
   / _` | '__/ _` | '__/ _` |
  | (_| | | | (_| | | | (_| |
   \__,_|_|  \__,_|_|  \__,_|

  The cool TeX automation tool.

  arara executes the TeX workflow you tell it to execute. Simply specify your
  needs within your TeX file and let arara do the work. These directives
  feature conditional execution and parameter expansion.

Options:
  -l, --log                        Generate a log output
  -v, --verbose / -s, --silent     Print the command output
  -n, --dry-run                    Go through all the motions of running a
                                   command, but with no actual calls
  -S, --safe-run                   Run in safe mode and disable potentially
                                   harmful features. Make sure your projects
                                   uses only allowed features.
  -w, --whole-file                 Extract directives in the file, not only in
                                   the header
  -p, --preamble TEXT              Set the file preamble based on the
                                   configuration file
  -t, --timeout INT                Set the execution timeout (in milliseconds)
  -L, --language TEXT              Set the application language
  -m, --max-loops INT              Set the maximum number of loops (> 0)
  -d, --working-directory PATH     Set the working directory for all tools
  -P, --call-property VALUE        Pass parameters to the application to be
                                   used within the session.
  --generate-completion [bash|zsh|fish]
                                   Generate a completion script for arara. Add
                                   'source <(arara --generate-completion
                                   <shell>)' to your shell's init file.
  -V, --version                    Show the version and exit
  -h, --help                       Show this message and exit

Arguments:
  file  The file(s) to evaluate and process

The following optional Gradle phase is used to handle the project cleaning, including the complete removal of the build/ directory. As a result, the project is then restored to the initial state without any generated Java bytecode. Run the following command in the terminal:

$ ./gradlew clean

This section covered the compilation details for building arara from source. The aforementioned steps are straightforward and can be automated in order to generate snapshots and daily builds. If you run into any issue, please let us know. Happy compilation!