Installing BIRT on X86-64bt LINUX box

New member and newbie here with a question on what is needed to install BIRT onto a Linux box with a 64 bit processor. The OS is Red Hat and I do have Eclipse installed. But I am struggling with understanding what is needed to install BIRT.

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Virgil Dodson

Hi JDubb,

You should be able to get BIRT into Eclipse by selecting Help | Software Updates from the menu. Then select the Available Software tab, Ganymede | Charting and Reporting | Eclipse BIRT Designer Framework.

JDubb

Hi vdodson,

Unfortunately this machine does not have internet access to it, nor will it ever. Is there an alternate method? I need to know which tarballs or zip files need to be loaded onto the machine via portable media.

Thanks

Virgil Dodson

Is it possible to install once on a connected machine, and then ZIP up (archive) the eclipse directory? Then you can expand that archive on lots of other machines that are not connected to the net using your portable media.<br />
<br />
This will get you the BIRT Report Designer onto your Linux box... but if you just want the BIRT runtime engine on the Linux box, you can download that separately at <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.birt-exchange.com/downloads/birt-report-deployment/'>BIRT Report Deployment - Downloads - BIRT Exchange</a>

JDubb

Yes I can install onto the LINUX box using portable media that contains the Eclipse from another machine which is connected to the web, however the problem then becomes a OS issue. This is because all my web-enabled machines are Windows-based, and the isolated server is LINUX based. With that being said, I am able to get Eclipse to run on this LINUX box. I get the Eclipse splashscreen. What I now need is the BIRT components installed. Will the link you provided above (birt-runtime2_2_2.zip) give me what I'm looking for?

Virgil Dodson

The runtime (BIRT Engine) is what you need if you are developing an application and want to integrate report functionality. You typically develop with the BIRT Engine on your development machine.. and then promote this code (and the BIRT Engine) to your server.<br />
<br />
I can't tell from your posts if your LINUX box is going to be your application server or just another dev machine since it sounds like it is disconnected from the world... so if you are just trying to use the BIRT designer on Linux, then you need the BIRT Designer Framework available on this page: <a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.birt-exchange.com/downloads/birt-report-designers/'>BIRT Report Designers - Downloads - BIRT Exchange</a> You can unzip the Framework into your existing eclipse install on your LINUX box.

JDubb

ok I've unzipped the content to the usr/local directory (and did a replace All when prompted about overwriting current plug-ins). Now I can see the org.eclipse.birt.**** plugins in the usr/local/eclipse/plugins directory but I can't launch BIRT. It appears that I need to somehow get Eclipse to load the BIRT plugins so when I click "Window-Perspective" I see the report option. Am I close?

Virgil Dodson

Relaunching Eclipse should allow the Report Design perspective to be visible.

JDubb

eh no luck...it's not there. Any other ideas? Did I do something wrong by overwriting some plugins during the install?

Virgil Dodson

I did a bit more investigating and the framework you installed only brings in the BIRT pieces... and not the required dependencies, like GEF, EMF, DTP, and WTP.

For Eclipse 3.4 and BIRT 2.3, you will need:
DTP Version 1.6 Release
EMF Version 2.4 Release EMF+XSD
GEF Version 3.4 Release runtime
WTP Version 3.0 Release

If you could use the Update manager to bring in BIRT, then all these depencies would update themselves.

After you update the dependencies, you might also try starting Eclipse with the -clean option. This has helped in the past when the Report Design perspective was not showing up.

JDubb

ok. thanks. where do I find these files for download?

JDubb

oh and remember this machine is disconnected so I can't use update for anything unfortunately. So I'll do some research to try and find these files but if you know exactly where they are it'd be appreciated.

JDubb

ok I ended up just installing the All In One on top of eclipse because I couldn't find all the dependencies by themselves. It works now...thank you Virgil

JDubb

Now I need to upgrade to v2.3.0. What is the recommended approach to the upgrade? Should I just unzip the birt-report-designer-all-in-one-2_3_0.zip? Or do you recommend another approach?