X Windows Configuration Setup for Using Sun Studio IDE

Before you read this document, read Sun Studio for an overview of the package and information on its use.

This document assumes that you have already modified your UNIX configuration files as described in the document Getting Started with Sun Studio IDE: Setting Up Your UNIX Account. Further modifications to these configuration files, described below, will facilitate your use of Forte in an X Windows environment.

Launching Sun Studio IDE

When you are connected to Strauss from an X Window system, the following commands will start a shell, launch the Sun Studio IDE, and then exit.

studioshell
 sunstudio &
 exit

The first time you run Sun Studio you should see a "Welcome" screen

1. Click the Setup Wizard to configure your IDE.
2. Choose the Swing HTML browser. Click Next >
3. The built-in text editor is the best for new users. If you are already an expert in using emacs, or vi you may choose the Xemacs or GVim options.
   Click Next >
4. Enable the Java module by setting the value in the Java row to "True."  All the other modules are enabled by default.
5. Click Finish.

Possible error message and warnings:

• If you use the sunstudio command on Copland, you will get the message:

   sunstudio: Command not found.

  You must run  sunstudio on Strauss.

• If you try to launch sunstudio with no X11 server available for display, you will get the error message:

   Error: Can't connect to X11 window server using ':0.0' as 
  the value of the DISPLAY variable.

  This is because your DISPLAY variable is not set.

• You may receive warning messages when you launch sunstudio.

   Warning: Cannot convert string "-monotype-arial 
  ..." to type FontStruct

  This is because this font monotype-arial is not available. To make this font available, you can add the Strauss font server to your font path with the command:

   xset fp+ 
   tcp/strauss.udel.edu:7100

  This should be done just once during your entire X session. It is best to add all required fonts or the Strauss font server to your font path automatically every time you start your X11 server. Consult your X11 server documentation to see how to do this.

• The warning message

   Warning: Cannot convert string "MetaCtrl<Key>Insert" to type
  VirtualBinding

  means you have no mapping from the keysym Insert to a key on your keyboard. You can modify the keysym database to use any key on your keyboard. Again consult your X11 server documentation to see how to do this.

• If you are upgrading from using a older version of Sun Studio, you may get a message:

   An unexpected exception has occurred

  You may have been using a feature which has changed in this version. We suggest you back up all your existing projects and remove the directory .sunstudio.

   \rm -r .sunstudio

  This will reset your account, and when you next run sunstudio, you will get the welcome screen with no projects in your "filesystem."

Modifing your .alias file

Add the following lines to the file called ~/.alias, which may not exist. These lines will create two new commands. The command studio will launch the Sun Studio IDE, and  studiostrauss will launch Sun Studio IDE on Strauss. The command studio will only work on Strauss; studiostrauss will work on any Unix machine with ssh X tunnelling enabled. 

 if $?DISPLAY then 
 alias studio "(setenv NEED_STUDIO; csh -c sunstudio)"
 alias studiostrauss> 
 ssh -Y -f strauss.udel.edu 'setenv
 NEED_STUDIO\; csh -c sunstudio' 
 endif

These two new commands will automatically become defined when you start a new shell or open a new xterm window.

Connecting to Strauss from your local desktop

From your local desktop system:

1. Start an X11 windows server

   Local X Windows desktops such as, Gnome, KDE or CDE are based on X11 so you should not start a new X11 server. A Windows PC needs Hummingbird's Exceed X11 server. A Mac OS X desktop needs the optional X11 Package from Apple.

2. Use an SSH client to connect to Strauss

   Type

    ssh -Y
   username@strauss.udel.edu

   replacing username with your UDelNet ID. The ssh -Y option was introduced with openSSH 3.8. If you get an error message with this command on, your machine used the older -X option. On a Windows PC, use the University-supplied SSH client to connect to Strauss with X11 tunnelling enabled, and there is no need to type the command.



3. Use the above alias to open the  Sun Studio IDE window.

   studio

These last two steps can be accomplished with one command:

ssh -Y -f username@strauss.udel.edu 'setenv NEED_STUDIO; csh -c
sunstudio'

Use this command to customize your desktop for quickly launching Sun Studio  on Strauss.