Workstation Installation Guide

Overview

Follow this installation guide in order to setup your workstation for development using Mobile Foundation.

DevKit Installer

The MobileFirst Developer Kit Installer will install a ready-to-use MobileFirst Server, database and runtime on your developer machine.

Prerequisite:
The installer requires Java installed.

1. Install Oracle’s JRE.

2. Add a JAVA_HOME variable, pointing to the JRE

   Mac and Linux: Edit your ~/.bash_profile:

    #### ORACLE JAVA
    export JAVA_HOME="/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk1.8.0_73.jdk/Contents/Home"
   

   Windows:
   Follow this guide.

   Known issue

Installation

Get the DevKit Installer from the Downloads page, and follow the on-screen instructions.

Starting and stopping the server

Open a command-line window and navigate to the extracted folder location.

Mac and Linux:

• To start the server: ./run.sh -bg
• To stop the server: ./stop.sh

Windows:

• To start the server: ./run.cmd -bg
• To stop the server: ./stop.cmd

Accessing the MobileFirst Operations Console

You can access the MobileFirst Operations Console in the following ways:

• From command-line, execute: mfpdev server console
• From a browser, visit: http://localhost:9080/mfpconsole

MobileFirst CLI

The MobileFirst CLI is a command-line interface enabling you to register applications in the MobileFirst Server, pull/push application from/to the MobileFirst Server, create Java and JavaScript adapters, manage multiple local and remote servers, update live applications using Direct Update and so on.

Prerequisite:

1. NodeJS and NPM are requirements before you can install the MobileFirst CLI.
   Download and install NodeJS v6.11.1 and NPM v3.10.10. For MobileFirst CLI version 8.0.2018100112 or higher, you can use Node v8.x or v10.x.

To Verify the installation, open a command-line window and execute: node -v.

1. Some CLI commands, such as creating, building and deploying adapters require Maven. See the next section for installation instructions.

Installation of MobileFirst CLI

Open Terminal and execute: npm install -g mfpdev-cli.

Mac and Linux: Note that you may need to run the command using sudo.
Read more about fixing NPM permissions.

To Verify the installation, open a command-line window and execute: mfpdev -v or mfpdev help.

Adapters and Security Checks

Adapters and Security Checks are your door-way to introduce authentication and other security layers to your application.

Prerequisite:
Apache Maven is a required to set-up before you can create adapters and security checks.

1. Download the Apache Maven .zip

2. Add a MVN_PATH variable, pointing to the Maven folder

   Mac and Linux: Edit your ~/.bash_profile:

    #### Apache Maven
    export MVN_PATH="/usr/local/bin"
   

   Windows:

   Follow this guide.

   Verify the installation by executing:

    mvn -v
   

Usage

With Apache Maven installed, you can now create adapters either via Maven command-line commands, or by using the MobileFirst CLI.
For more information, review the Adapters tutorials.

Known issue on Windows

On Windows machines with Oracle Java 8 update 60 and above, MobileFirst installers using InstallAnywhere technology fails with the following error.

Cause of the error

Changes introduced by Oracle in Java 8 update 60 cause installers built using InstallAnywhere to fail with the above error. The reason for this failure is that with Oracle Java 8u60 and above, InstallAnywhere fails to automatically detect the location of the latest supported JVM on the Windows machine.

Resolving the error

One of the following approaches can be used to resolve the issue.

Approach 1

Guide InstallAnywhere to launch using a given JVM. Launch the installer via command line and tell InstallAnywhere which JVM to use for the launch by using the LAX_VM parameter.

Approach 2

Since this issue is not seen with Java versions earlier to Java 8u60, use Java 7.