Build Process

This page documents the steps that a CAS developer/contributor should take for building a CAS server locally.

Development

Source Checkout

The following shell commands may be used to grab the source from the repository:

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git clone git@github.com:apereo/cas.git cas-server

Or a quicker clone:

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git clone --depth=1 --single-branch --branch=master git@github.com:apereo/cas.git cas-server
# git fetch --unshallow

For a successful clone, you will need to have set up SSH keys for your account on Github. If that is not an option, you may clone the CAS repository under https via https://github.com/apereo/cas.git.

Build

The following shell commands may be used to build the source:

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cd cas-server
git checkout master

When done, you may build the codebase via the following command:

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./gradlew build install --parallel -x test -x javadoc -x check

The following commandline boolean flags are supported by the build:

• You can use -x <task> to entirely skip/ignore a phase in the build. (i.e. -x test, -x check).
• If you have no need to let Gradle resolve/update dependencies and new module versions for you, you can take advantage of the --offline flag when you build which tends to make the build go a lot faster.
• Using the Gradle daemon also is a big help. It should be enabled by default.
• Enabling Gradle’s build cache via --build-cache can also significantly improve build times.
• If you are using Windows, you may find -DskipNpmLint=true needed for the build due to line ending difference between OS

Tasks

Available build tasks can be found using the command ./gradlew tasks.

Sass Compilation

The build is automatically wired to compile .scss files into .css via a Gulp. To let this step successfully pass, you may need to install gulp and npm, which the build should automatically do. See the Build section for more info.

IDE Setup

CAS development may be carried out using any modern IDE.

IntelliJ IDEA

The following IDEA settings for Gradle may also be useful:

• Note how ‘Use auto-import’ is turned off. To resolve Gradle modules and dependencies, you are required to force refresh the project rather than have IDEA auto-refresh the project as you make changes to the build script. Disabling auto-import usually results in much better performance.
• Note how ‘Offline work’ is enabled. This is equivalent to Gradle’s own --offline flag, forcing the build to not contact Maven/Gradle repositories for resolving dependencies. Working offline usually results in much better performance.
• You must also decide to use the ‘default gradle wrapper’ option as opposed to your own local Gradle installation.

You may also need to adjust the ‘Compiler’ settings so modules are built in parallel and automatically:

Additionally, you may need to customize the VM settings to ensure the development environment can load and index the codebase:

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-server
-Xms2g
-Xmx8g
-XX:NewRatio=3
-Xss16m
-XX:+UseConcMarkSweepGC
-XX:+CMSParallelRemarkEnabled
-XX:ConcGCThreads=4
-XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=840m
-XX:+AlwaysPreTouch
-XX:+TieredCompilation
-XX:+UseCompressedOops
-XX:SoftRefLRUPolicyMSPerMB=50
-Dsun.io.useCanonCaches=false
-Djava.net.preferIPv4Stack=true
-ea
-XX:MaxPermSize=512m
-XX:PermSize=512m
-Xverify:none

Plugins

The following plugins may prove useful during development:

• Checkstyle
• FindBugs
• Lombok

Once you have installed the Lombok plugin, you will also need to ensure Annotation Processing is turned on. You may need to restart IDEA in order for changes to take full effect.

Running CAS

It is possible to run the CAS web application directly from IDEA by creating a Run Configuration that roughly matches the following screenshot:

Eclipse

For Eclipse, execute the following commands:

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cd cas-server
./gradlew eclipse

Then, import the project into eclipse using “General\Existing Projects into Workspace” and choose “Add Gradle Nature” from the “Configure” context menu of the project.

Testing Modules

To test the functionality provided by a given CAS module, execute the following steps:

• Add the module reference to the build script (i.e. build.gradle) of web application you intend to run (i.e Web App, Management Web App, etc)

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implementation project(":support:cas-server-support-modulename")

• Prepare the embedded container, as described below, to run and deploy the web application

Embedded Containers

The CAS project comes with a number of built-in modules that are pre-configured with embedded servlet containers such as Apache Tomcat, Jetty, etc for the server web application, the management web application and others.

Configure SSL

The thekeystore file must include the SSL private/public keys that are issued for your CAS server domain. You will need to use the keytool command of the JDK to create the keystore and the certificate. The following commands may serve as an example:

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keytool -genkey -alias cas -keyalg RSA -validity 999 -keystore /etc/cas/thekeystore -ext san=dns:$REPLACE_WITH_FULL_MACHINE_NAME

Note that the validity parameter allows you to specify, in the number of days, how long the certificate should be valid for. The longer the time period, the less likely you are to need to recreate it. To recreate it, you’d need to delete the old one and then follow these instructions again. You may also need to provide the Subject Alternative Name field, which can be done with keytool via -ext san=dns:$REPLACE_WITH_FULL_MACHINE_NAME.

The response will look something like this:

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Enter keystore password: changeit
Re-enter new password: changeit
What is your first and last name?
  [Unknown]:  $REPLACE_WITH_FULL_MACHINE_NAME (i.e. mymachine.domain.edu)
What is the name of your organizational unit?
  [Unknown]:  Test
What is the name of your organization?
  [Unknown]:  Test
What is the name of your City or Locality?
  [Unknown]:  Test
What is the name of your State or Province?
  [Unknown]:  Test
What is the two-letter country code for this unit?
  [Unknown]:  US
Is CN=$FULL_MACHINE_NAME, OU=Test, O=Test, L=Test, ST=Test, C=US correct?
  [no]:  yes

In your /etc/hosts file (on Windows: C:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts), you may also need to add the following entry:

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127.0.0.1 mymachine.domain.edu

The certificate exported out of your keystore needs to also be imported into the Java platform’s global keystore:

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# Export the certificate into a file
keytool -export -file /etc/cas/config/cas.crt -keystore /etc/cas/thekeystore -alias cas

# Import the certificate into the global keystore
sudo keytool -import -file /etc/cas/config/cas.crt -alias cas -keystore $JAVA_HOME/jre/lib/security/cacerts

…where JAVA_HOME is where you have the JDK installed (i.e /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk[version].jdk/Contents/Home).

Deploy

Execute the following command:

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cd webapp/cas-server-webapp-tomcat

# Or for the management-webapp:
# cd webapp-mgmt/cas-management-webapp

../../gradlew build bootRun --parallel --offline --configure-on-demand --build-cache --stacktrace

The response will look something like this:

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...
2017-05-26 19:10:46,470 INFO [org.apereo.cas.web.CasWebApplication] - <Started CasWebApplication in 21.893 seconds (JVM running for 36.888)>
...

By default CAS will be available at https://mymachine.domain.edu:8443/cas

Remote Debugging

The embedded container instance is pre-configured to listen to debugger requests on port 5000 provided you specify the enableRemoteDebugging parameter. For external container deployments, such as Apache Tomcat, the following example shows what needs configuring in the bin/startup.sh|bat file:

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export JPDA_ADDRESS=5000
export JPDA_TRANSPORT=dt_socket
bin/catalina.sh jpda start

When you’re done, create a remote debugger configuration in your IDE that connects to this port and you will be able to step into the code.

Dependency Updates

In order to get a full report on dependencies, run the following command at the root:

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./gradlew dependencyUpdates -Drevision=release

Continuous Integration

CAS uses Travis CI as its main continuous integration tool. The build primarily is controlled by the .travis.yml file, defined at the root of the project directory.

The following special commit messages are recognized by Travis CI to control aspects of build behavior:

Travis CI is mainly responsible for the following tasks:

• Running a full build, including tests and style checks.
• Pushing project documentation artifacts into the gh-pages branch.
• Uploading snapshots to relevant repositories.

The build is triggered for automatically for all pull requests, direct commits, etc where different policies may apply for each change type.