IDEs

Eclipse

With Maven

Maven project.properties are setup to generate correct paths - but currently does not generate antlr so you still need to build drools-java by hand first.

1. Update to latest plugin (currently 1.9):

   maven plugin:download -DgroupId=maven -DartifactId=maven-eclipse-plugin -Dversion=1.9
   

2. Call the following from top level:

   maven drools:eclipse
   

3. Build Drools
4. Open Eclipse
5. Add each Drools module to the workspace
6. You may need to add the MAVEN_REPO environment variable when in eclipse
   -->Note that maven's build target is the same as eclipse, so sometimes building from command line can confuse Eclipse - if it does, just do a clean from within Eclipse (project menu).

Without Maven (Ciprian Bacalu)

1. Download the latest drools cvs snapshot to a folder of your choice: <drools-src-dir>
2. Create a Java project named drools
3. Add the required drools dependencies to the drools project: janino.jar, antlr.jar, jsr94-1.1.jar:
   1. Right click on the drools project, check Properties -> Java Build Path -> Libraries
   2. Click on the Add External Jars... button and add the required libraries
4. Add drools source folders to the drools project
   1. Right click on the <drools> project, check Properties -> Java Build Path -> Source
   2. Click on the Add Folder... button
   3. Check the drools project root and click on Create new folder... button
   4. Click on Advanced>>
   5. Fill in the Folder name: drools-base
   6. Check Link to folder in the file system
   7. Click on Browse... and choose <drools-src-dir>/drools-base/src/main folder
   8. Repeat steps 3 - 8 for drools-core, drools-examples, drools-io, drools-java, drools-jsr94, drools-smf
      • If you want to use groovy and/or python you'll have to add the required libraries and to repeat
   9. steps 3 - 8 for drools-groovy and drools-python
5. Add the drools project to the build path of your project
   1. Right click on your project, check Properties -> Java Build Path -> Projects
   2. Check the drools project in the list of Required projects on the build path.
6. Any time you want to update the cvs snapshot all you have to do is to download it to the same folder <drools-src-dir> and to refresh the contents of the drools project in Eclipse (Right click on the drools project and choose Refresh)

IDEA

With Maven

1. build drools
2. call the following from the top level

   maven idea:multiproject
   

3. open the generated idea project file (drools.iws) in IDEA
4. add junit.jar to the classpath for each project

NetBeans 4.0 (Kannan)

1. Download and install the mevenide plugin (http://mevenide.codehaus.org/).
2. File > open.... and choose your drools project folder (drools-2.0 for example).
3. File > open... every(or just those you need) drools modules contained in the folder (drools-base, drools-core....)