Google Web Toolkit — Installation (Part I)

What follows is a mini-howto on setting up the Google Web Toolkit on a fresh “Workstation” installation of CentOS or Fedora Core with Apache HTTP server and PHP installed. A series of commands that can be used to setup Google Web Toolkit. Although the howto is intended for environments that primarily use PHP, the information presented may be useful to others. The Google Web Toolkit installation process that is explored here will also cover the installation of Tomcat and configuration of Apache as a reverse proxy.

I. Installing Sun’s Java 2 Standard Edition Development Kit

0. Remove any old Java environments that may be installed and not used. For example, a Java implementation that is part of the GNU compiler collection may be preinstalled with the operating system. “rpm -e java-1.4.2-gcj-compat-1.4.2.0-27jpp” removes the preinstalled Java development environment for the CentOS 4.3 Workstation installation.

1. Go to http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/download.jsp, and download jdk-1_5_0_07-linux-i586-rpm.bin (or a later version, if available).

2. With the command line terminal, navigate to the directory that contains the file and enter the command “chmod +x jdk-1_5_0_07-linux-i586-rpm.bin”

3. Enter the command “./jdk-1_5_0_07-linux-i586-rpm.bin”

4. You may need to su into root to carry out the following command: “rpm -ivh jdk-1_5_0_07-linux-i586-rpm”

5. The Java Development Kit should now be installed at /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_06. I usually create a symbolic link “ln -s /usr/java/jdk1.5.0_06 /usr/java/jdk”

II. Installing Apache Ant

1. “wget ftp://ftp.wayne.edu/apache/ant/binaries/apache-ant-1.6.5-bin.tar.gz”

2. “tar zxvf apache-ant-1.6.5-bin.tar.gz”

3. “mv apache-ant-1.6.5 /usr/.”

4. “ln -s /usr/apache-ant-1.6.5 /usr/apache-ant”

III. Installing Apache Tomcat

1. “wget ftp://ftp.wayne.edu/apache/tomcat/tomcat-5/v5.5.17/bin/apache-tomcat-5.5.17.tar.gz”

2. “tar zxvf apache-tomcat-5.5.17.tar.gz”

3. “mv apache-tomcat-5.5.17 /usr/.”

4. “ln -s /usr/apache-tomcat-5.5.17 /usr/apache-tomcat”

III. Installing Google Web Toolkit

1. Get the Google Web Toolkit from http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/. We cover installation of gwt-linux-1.0.21.tar.gz.

2. “tar zxvf gwt-linux-1.0.21.tar.gz”

3. “mv gwt-linux-1.0.21 /usr/.”

4. “ln -s /usr/gwt-linux-1.0.21 /usr/google-gwt”

The required components are now installed on the system, however Apache Tomcat is currently not running. In Part II of this series of posts, I plan to cover the configuration of Tomcat and the configuration of Apache HTTP server as a reverse proxy for the Tomcat server. Init scripts will be set up as well. Then, in Part III, we’ll get to the more exciting stuff such as a “Hello World” application that uses GWT’s RPC features, which allow AJAX to be interesting within the Google Web Toolkit.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 27th, 2006 at 6:15 pm and is filed under IT Administration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Questions, comments, and responses are welcomed and appreciated.

2 Responses to “Google Web Toolkit — Installation (Part I)”

  1. NUTS Says:
    July 7th, 2008 at 8:38 pm

    GOOD

  2. jey Says:
    June 8th, 2006 at 4:01 am

    It’s too good for installing JDK and Tomcat in Linux

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