[xsd-users] Building xsd with the eclipse cdt

[Boris Kolpackov]

Hi Monika,

Huether, Monika <monika.huether at fkie.fraunhofer.de> writes:

> I'm working with eclipse 3.5 under linux and gcc and xercesc 3.0. I'm 
> trying to run the xsd examples. In the xsde mailing list I found an 
> example for building xsde with eclipse. What are the main differences 
> between the xsd and xsde settings? 

I have adapted these instructions for the XSD and the C++/Tree 
mapping. So here are the step-by-step instruction for setting the 
example/cxx/tree/hello/ example with Eclipse CDT. You can use the 
same approach for other examples or your application. Here I assume 
XSD is installed in /opt/xsd and that the Xerces-C++ library was 
built and installed in /opt/xerces-c. If you haven't built Xerces-C++
yet you can try the following:

$ ./configure --prefix /opt/xerces-c
$ make
$ sudo make install

1. Create a directory for the hello example and copy driver.cxx,
   hello.xml, and hello.xsd into it. Do not copy the makefile.

2. In Eclipse, do File->New->C++ Project. Type the directory
   name from step 1 as project name so that the Location field
   points to the directory created in step 1. Click Next then
   Finish. At this stage Eclipse will try to build driver.cxx
   which will result in compile errors. This is expected since
   we haven't generated the C++ files from the schema yet.

3. In Project Explorer right-click on hello.xsd and select 
   Properties. Select C/C++ Build->Settings, select Build Steps
   tab, and change Configuration to All. Change "Disable Custom
   Build Step" to "Apply Custom Build Step Overriding Other Tools".
   Leave Additional Input Files field blank. In output file names,
   list all the generated C++ files with the '../' path, separated
   by semicolon. In our case it will be:

   ../hello.hxx;../hello.cxx;../hello.ixx
   
   In the Command field put the XSD compiler command line that is
   used to compile the schema. Also add '--output-dir ..' and use the
   '../' path for the schema file. In our case it will be:

   /top/xsd/bin/xsd cxx-tree --generate-inline --output-dir .. ../hello.xsd

   In the Description field put something like "xsd hello.xsd" or
   "compiling hello.xsd". Click Ok to close the dialog.

4. In Project Explorer right-click on the project name and select
   Properties. Select C/C++ General->Paths and Symbols, select
   GNU C++, select Includes tab, and change Configuration to All.
   Add the path for the libxsd library headers, /opt/xsd/libxsd
   in our case. Then add the path for the Xerces-C++ headers, 
   /opt/xerces-c/include in our case. Change to the Library Paths 
   tab and add the path to the libxerces-c.so/libxerces-c.a libraries, 
   /opt/xerces-c/lib in our case. Click Apply.

   Change to C/C++ Build->Settings->GCC C++ Linker->Libraries.
   Add 'xerces-c' to the Libraries list. Click Ok to close the dialog.

5. Now Eclipse knows how to build the generated C++ files from the
   schema. Unfortunately, Eclipse is not smart enough to figure out
   that some files included in driver.cxx are those generated C++ 
   files and it could have successfully compiled driver.cxx if only
   it compiled the schema first.

   So when we don't have the generated C++ files, we need to 
   "bootstrap" the project by explicitly compiling them. Once the
   files are generated, Eclipse will figure out all the dependencies
   and everything will work as expected (that is, if we modify
   hello.xsd, Eclipse will know to first recompile hello.xsd and
   only then recompile driver.cxx).

   The easiest way to do this bootstrapping is to add a special
   target that will trigger the schema compilation. Go to Project->
   Make Targets->Create. In Target Name type something like Bootstrap.
   Then uncheck the "Same as the target name" box and enter the name
   of the generated file with the '../' path, one file per schema
   is sufficient. In our case it will be ../hello.hxx. Click Ok
   to close the dialog.

6. Now we can bootstrap the project by doing Project->Make Targets->
   Build and selecting the Bootstrap target.

   After that we can continue with normal builds.

Let me know if you run into any issue with this.


> I also can't find the xsd library file in the libxsd folder. Do I 
> have to generate it?

No, libxsd is a header-only library so you don't need to build
anything for it.

Boris