Documentation / JAMS Setup & Configuration

Setting up a JAMS Development Environment

Introduction

This guide covers setting up a development environment for JAMS and its model libraries (e.g. J2K), for anyone who wants to build the latest source, implement custom model components, or modify JAMS itself. JAMS uses Git for version control and Maven for builds, so setup is IDE-agnostic — any IDE with Maven support (NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, VS Code) works.

Recommended Software

1. A JDK, version 17 or newer (e.g. OpenJDK)
2. Git
3. An IDE with Maven support, if you don’t want to work from the command line

Maven itself does not need to be installed separately — both repositories include the Maven wrapper (mvnw/mvnw.cmd), which downloads the correct Maven version automatically.

Downloading Sources

JAMS and its model libraries are hosted on GitHub:

git clone https://github.com/jamsframework/jams.git
git clone https://github.com/jamsframework/jamsmodels.git

Building JAMS

cd jams
./mvnw install -pl jams-starter -am

This builds the jams-starter module and its dependencies, including jams-api/jams-main, which the model libraries build against. The runnable bundle is assembled in jams-bin:

cd jams-bin
./juice.sh

Building the Model Libraries

With the JAMS build above done, register jams-api/jams-main for jamsmodels to build against:

cd jamsmodels
cp ../jams/jams-api/target/jams-api-*.jar jams-libs/
cp ../jams/jams-main/target/jams-main-*.jar jams-libs/
./install-jams-libs.sh            # or install-jams-libs.bat on Windows

This only needs repeating when you rebuild jams with a different version. Then build the models:

./mvnw package                    # build all models
./mvnw package -pl J2K_base -am   # build a single model, e.g. J2K_base

The built model jars are collected in the components/ directory of the jamsmodels checkout. Add that directory to the libs property of JAMS (Settings dialog in JUICE — see JAMS System Configuration) so JAMS picks up the compiled components.

Working in an IDE

Both jams and jamsmodels are plain multi-module Maven projects — open the checkout’s root pom.xml in your IDE (“Open Project” / “Import Maven Project”, depending on the IDE) and it will resolve modules and dependencies automatically. To develop a new model component, add it as a class in the relevant model module (or create a new Maven module for it) and implement the JAMSComponent interface — see the existing components in jamsmodels for examples.

Running JAMS/J2K from the IDE

To run or debug JAMS from your IDE, set up a run configuration for the jams-starter module’s main class with arguments such as:

-c <path to configuration file> -m <path to model definition file>

Run without arguments (or with -h/--help) to see all available options — see Starting JAMS for the full list. After modifying model components, rebuild the affected jamsmodels module (see above) before running — JAMS loads components from the built jars, not directly from source.