Set Up Kawa

To use Kawa successfully you need to set it up before you use it. Professor Wolf has additional information on setting up Kawa. Start with this page as it shows you most of the basics.

You should establish a working directory that is NOT the Kawa directory, and is NOT the Java instalation directory. Call it MyProject or something. All of your source files go into this directory and perhaps subdirectories.

There are some additional options you need to set also to make your project work correctly.

  1. From the Customize menu, select Project Root Options. Check the Compilation Output Directory box and select the >> box to the right of the text field. In the Add/Edit text field at the bottom of the dialog, enter a period. Click Update. Click Close. Click OK. This will make the system distribute your class files to the proper directories relative to your working directory.
  2. From the Project menu, select Interpreter Options. Check the Command Line Arguments box and select the >> box to the right of the text feld. Enter your command line arguments to your Java program (for example, the name of the input text file the program will read) into the Add/Edit box. Click Update. Click Close. Click OK. This will feed the arguments you have typed here as if they came from a DOS/Unix command line.

The Kawa window has two panes. At the top of the left pane are four icons. The leftmost one is your list of projects. The second one is the list of packages in the java system. The third icon is the debugger, and the last one contains help for Kawa. This last one will only work if the Kawa paths are set up correctly. From the Customize menu select Options and then select the Kawa Paths tab. The Help Index File should be called Kawa.ipg in the Kawa distribution folder. The JDK Package Index should be kawa.pkg in the same directory. You can type this in, or use the File... button and navigate to it after clicking the >> box next to the text field.

Here is another page that will help you set up Kawa specifically for the DPS Project.