Get the Sources

Basically, there are two ways to get the source code of SIP Communicator. You can either download a Zip containing a nightly snapshot of the source tree or use SVN to checkout the sources directly from the repository.

Downloading the Zip Package

Download sources and then unzip it on your computer.

Using SVN

SVN will allow any project member to access the repository. However only users with Project Developer status are permitted to commit changes to the repository.

You can retrieve the sources with the command:

 svn checkout https://sip-communicator.dev.java.net/svn/sip-communicator/trunk
sip-communicator --username <yourusername>

Note: this command includes characters that might have special significance to your command interpreter. You should either escape those characters or quote the individual (entire) argument strings.

The checkout process should start running and a warning will be issued because the SSL server certificate was not issued by a trusted authority. If you accept the certificate permanently, your sandbox will be marked so that subsequent SVN requests to this server will not be interrupted. (Visit the Subversion help page for more information)

Install needed applications

In order to build and run the SIP Communicator, all you need is a recent JDK and ANT.

  • JDK
    • Download the latest version on java.sun.com website
    • Unzip the package
    • Add <jdk_package_path>/bin to your PATH
  • ANT
    • Download the latest version from http://ant.apache.org
    • Unzip the package
    • Add <ant_package_path>/bin to your PATH

Build and start

To see a list of the most useful ant commands for the project, you can simply execute:

 ant

To see a list of all the external ant targets in the project, you should execute:

 ant -projecthelp

To safely build the project from the latest source and create all Oscar bundles, you need to execute:

 ant rebuild

To run the application against your latest successful build, simply enter:

 ant run

.. but be careful, because this might not reflect the latest source changes. If you want to pick up your latest changes first, then enter:

 ant make run

.. or if you are worried about subtle dependency issues, use this “paranoid” command:

 ant rebuild run

Prepare and execute the tests

The project maintains a large number of unit tests. If you’d like to use them in order to make sure that everything is working as expected, follow these steps:

  • For tests that deal with ICQ, you need to do the following:
    • Create two ICQ accounts on icq.com/register
    • In the lib directory, copy the accounts.properties.template file to a new file called accounts.properties.
    • Configure the new file with the following parameters :
 accounts.icq.TESTED_IMPL_ACCOUNT_ID = <first_account_uin>
 accounts.icq.TESTED_IMPL_PWD = <first_account_password>

 accounts.icq.TESTING_IMPL_ACCOUNT_ID = <second_account_uin>
 accounts.icq.TESTING_IMPL_PWD = <second_account_password>

 accounts.icq.CONTACT_LIST = group1.321947947 group2.269274750
  group3.294057493 group3.219630674

(The contact list above is an example, you could use other groups and users)

  • Execute the following command :
 ant rebuild

Author: Veronique Dupont
Update: Brian Burch