The Joomla Development Tool (short: jdt) is a command line tool to easen the development of extensions for Joomla! CMS. It tries to bring the command line facilities of other famous web frameworks like Rails to Joomla!.

And it really IS cool!

• status (shows the current extension type, name, version, author, etc.)
• new <commands> (bootstraps a Joomla! extension, e.g. a component)
  • component NAME (bootstraps a component)
  • module NAME (bootstraps a module)
  • plugin NAME (bootstraps a plugin)
  • library NAME (bootstraps a library)
  • template NAME (bootstraps a template)
  • language NAME (bootstraps a language)
  • package NAME (bootstraps a package)
• version (version of the JDT)
• build (creates zip file for deployment, with timestamp)
• release (creates zip file for deployment)
• bump (increments either --patch, --minor or --major version, --patch is default)
• clean (removes the /zip and the /.jdt directories)
• deploy (installs the extension via web at an active Joomla! instance)
• undeploy (removes the extension via weg from an active Joomla! instance)
• xampp <commands> (xampp specific functionality with several subcommands)
  • web (open the Extension in Browser)
  • phpMyAdmin (opens phpMyAdmin in Browser)
  • php_ini (shows php.ini on console)

(NOT YET IMPLEMENTED)

• generate (create models, controllers, views with default data)
  • controller (create controller)
  • model (create model)
  • view (create view)
  • language (create language files)
  • scaffold (create controllers, models and views)
• install-jdump (installs JDump at a Joomla! instance)
• uninstall-jdump (uninstall JDump from a Joomla! instance)
• sync (copy the files to a local Joomla! installation, once or continously)
• test (executes unit and integration tests)

Yes.

• /zip stores your deployable zip files of your extension
• ~/.jdt/config.yml caches global information like xampp und Joomla! installations
• /.jdt/config.yml caches project specific information like usernames and passwords

However, these can be deleted by issuing the jdt clean command.

This tool solely supports Joomla! 1.7, as older versions do have much more ambiquity within their manifest.xml files.

This is a good question. A very good one.

PHP is the language that is used by Joomla! and well suited for web applications. Ruby, however, has quite some library support for command line tooling, xml processing, automation etc. Thus, Ruby and its ecosystem provides a high abstraction level to create command line tools which is implemented here.

The installation is pretty simple. You need a running Ruby implementation. It is recommended to use the standard implementation Ruby. After that, you can easily install the JDT using the following command:

1. gem install jdt

The tool is then useable in the command line with $> jdt

• Ruby 1.9.3
• RubyGems newest version installed with (gem update --system)

The source code is solely available via github

git clone https://www.github.com/simonharrer/joomlatools.git

Install the following gems: ZenTest, gem-release, bundler

• gem install ZenTest
• gem install gem-release
• gem install bundle

Execute bundle (installs all required gems defined by the gem specification)

NOT WORKING UNDER WINDOWS!

Solution:

• Download and extract DevKit to an arbitrary folder
• Open devkit_folder/msys.bat
• Change the directory to the JDT directory
• Execute bundle which builds the native code for your system

1. clone the repository

   git clone https://www.github.com/simonharrer/joomlatools.git

2. install the following gems: gem-release, bundler

   • gem install bundle

3. Execute bundle install to install all dependent gems

4. Execute rake install to install the jdt locally

5. Use the tool with $> jdt COMMAND

The acceptance and integration tests are specified using the gherkin language and executed using cucumber.

They are located within the features folder and can be executed using bundle exec cucumber features from within the root directory of the JDT.

The tests are written to only work in specific cases:

• the gem has to be installed locally using rake install from within the JDT directory
• the tests only work using Windows. If you have a posix system, it would work if you simply replace all jdt.bat with jdt.

Best practices

• Execute only subsets of tests

  • Mark scenarios or features which are currently worked on with @wip (work in progress)
  • Execute bundle exec cucumber features --tags @wip

• For having color on windows:

  • Download this file
  • Copy it into the bin directory of your Ruby installation
  • Add these to the normal execution to have colors --color | wac
  • Execute bundle exec cucumber features --color | wac

The unit tests are implemented using rspec.

They are located within the spec folder and can be executed using rspec spec from within the root directory of the JDT.

The tests can automatically be executed using autotest. This tool detects when files change and automatically reexecutes only the tests relevant to the file change.

To cancel it, you have to press CTRL + C twice! By pressing CTRL + C once, all tests will be reexecuted.

TODO: does this work with cucumber as well?

It is written with Ruby 1.9.2 ontop of several libraries:

• thor to provide the command line commands
• nokogiri to read the manifest xml file per Joomla! extension
• rubyzip to create zip files as deployable artifacts
• mechanize to deploy extensions to Joomla! systems via web
• launchy to open the browser at specific pages

• make sure that everything is commited
• gem bump this increases the version number
• gem release this creates the gem and pushes it to RubyGems