Starting the Project

Setting up Version Control

First things first, we need a home:

$ mkdir agilephil
$ cd agilephil
$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/phil/agilephil/.git/

Okay, one repository, created!  No immediate plans to put onto github, though that's really more to do with the fact that I have nobody asking for it.  Next, a branching model.  The one proposed by Vincent Driessen at nvie.com is nicely explained, so I'll be aiming to follow this one.

$ cat <<EOF > README
This is a CRM-type of application I've created to learn Scala and Lift.  It is super-basic and won't win any awards.  Probably.


Follow along with me at agilephil.blogger.com.
EOF
$ git add README
$ git commit -m 'initial project version'


$ git checkout -b develop master
Switched to a new branch 'develop'
$ git checkout -b features/MultiUser1 develop
Switched to a new branch 'features/MultiUser1'


Creating the Project

So now, we're ready to rock and roll.  We have a features branch called MultiUser1 into which we'll complete our first user story.  The only trick: I need a project structure that Lift will like.  To do this, there are a number of maven archetypes available as described on liftweb's wiki page Using Maven.  I think I'll start out with "basic":


$ mvn archetype:generate \
 -DarchetypeGroupId=net.liftweb \
 -DarchetypeArtifactId=lift-archetype-basic_2.9.1 \
 -DarchetypeVersion=2.4-M4 \
 -DarchetypeRepository=http://scala-tools.org/repo-releases \
 -DremoteRepositories=http://scala-tools.org/repo-releases \
 -DgroupId=org.philgra \
 -DartifactId=contactdb \
 -Dversion=0.1

$ git add contactdb
$ git commit -m 'creating initial project structure from basic archetype'


The Using Maven page also describes a pom.xml file (the maven build metadata), but I'm not entirely sure why, as the archetype included one of these.  Needless to say, lesson learned: ignore that incomplete-looking pom.xml and stick with the one that came with the archetype.


Starting the Project

A quick test that it works, as allegedly we should have a working application:

$ cd contactdb
$ mvn jetty:run 

And browse to http://localhost:8080 ... presto!  Well, not so "presto"... maven resolved a TON of dependencies and spent the better part of 5 minutes downloading bits (my 3 Mbps "broadband" connection is stellar).

Curiously, I note a number of links on the menu, including "Login" and "Sign up".  Perhaps my story has already been written for me!  

Stopping jetty, and then checking out a few new additions to my project folder:

$ git status
# On branch features/MultiUser1
# Untracked files:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to include in what will be committed)
#
#       lift_proto.db.h2.db
#       lift_proto.db.trace.db
#       target/

So, "target" is the compiled code and it seems strange to track anything there.  Furthermore, I don't think I care to keep these .db files in my repository (they are presumably the underlying database...I'll figure out how to get that onto a MySQL server later).  

A .gitignore file will come in handy:

$ cat <<EOF > .gitignore

/target/

/*.db

EOF

$ git add .gitignore

$ git commit -m 'ignore target and database files'

Well, that's me done then for the night.  The next task will be to work out how, exactly, test-driven development works in Lift/Scala.  No friends, we do not write the application first...we write our tests first, and then we fix our broken tests.