Development Setup Overview

Development Setup Overview
Step 1 of 1

Liferay’s development tools aim to help you get started fast. The basic steps for installing Liferay Developer Studio are

• Download a Liferay Developer Studio bundle.

• Unzip the downloaded package to a location on your system.

• Start Developer Studio.

You’ll follow these steps, and then generate an environment for developing your first Liferay DXP application.

Installing a Liferay Developer Studio Bundle

To install Liferay Developer Studio, follow these steps:

1. Download and install the Java Development Kit (JDK). Liferay DXP runs on Java. The JDK is required because you’ll be developing Liferay DXP apps in Liferay Developer Studio. The JDK is an enhanced version of the Java Environment used for developing new Java technology.

2. Download Liferay Developer Studio. Installing it is easy: unzip it to a convenient location on your system.

3. To run Liferay Developer Studio, execute the eclipse executable.

The first time you start Liferay Developer Studio, it prompts you to select an Eclipse workspace. If you specify a folder where no workspace currently exists, Liferay Developer Studio creates a new workspace in that folder. Follow these steps to create a new workspace:

1. When prompted, indicate your workspace’s path. Name your new workspace guestbook-workspace and click OK.

2. When Liferay Developer Studio first launches, it presents a welcome page. Click the Workbench icon to continue.

Nice job! Your development environment is installed and your workspace is set up.

Creating a Liferay Workspace

Now you’ll create another kind of workspace–a Liferay Workspace. By holding and managing your Liferay DXP projects, a Liferay Workspace provides a simplified, straightforward way to develop Liferay DXP applications. In the background, a Liferay Workspace uses Blade CLI and Gradle to manage dependencies and organize your build environment. Note that to avoid configuration issues, you can only create one Liferay Workspace for each Eclipse Workspace.

Follow these steps to create a Liferay Workspace in Liferay Developer Studio:

1. Select File → New → Liferay Workspace Project. Note: you may have to select File → New → Other, then choose Liferay Workspace Project in the Liferay category.

   

   Figure 1: By selecting *Liferay Workspace*, you begin the process of creating a new workspace for your Liferay DXP projects.

   A New Liferay Workspace dialog appears, which presents several configuration options.

2. Give your workspace the name com-liferay-docs-guestbook.

3. Next, choose your workspace’s location. Leave the default setting checked. This places your Liferay Workspace inside your Eclipse workspace.

4. Check the Download Liferay bundle checkbox to automatically download and unzip a Liferay DXP instance in your workspace. When prompted, name the server liferay-tomcat-bundle.

5. Click Finish to create your Liferay Workspace. This may take a while because Liferay Developer Studio downloads the Liferay DXP bundle in the background.

   

   Figure 2: Liferay Developer Studio provides an easy-to-follow menu to create your Liferay Workspace.

A dialog appears prompting you to open the Liferay Workspace perspective. Click Yes, and your perspective switches to Liferay Workspace.

Congratulations! Your development environment is ready! Next, you’ll get started developing your first Liferay DXP application.