LDAPHttp Java Libraries
August 2005

Introduction
------------

The LDAPHttp libraries support the development of component client and web applications 
against backend servers that employ the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). 
An LDAPHttp distribution includes at least the classes of the following packages:

com.mentata.l3d
com.mentata.i4c
com.mentata.sg8
com.mentata.sg8.core

Definitive information on LDAPHttp is available at:

http://www.mentata.com/ldaphttp/

This offering is a work in progress. It is open source by definition, but should not yet 
be considered a cooperative development effort.
          
Dependencies
------------

The LDAPHttp classes can use Java Standard Development Kit (SDK) version 1.4 or higher 
for compilation or execution, although some newer features (e.g. Generics) are not 
implemented at present to ensure backwards compatibility. 

LDAPHttp distributions are designed to make use of the Apache Ant build tool, available 
and explained at:

http://ant.apache.org/

The compilation instructions below assume a proper installation and use of Ant.

All LDAPHttp libraries depend upon the classes of the open source Java LDAP API (JLDAP), 
originally developed by Novell and contributed to the OpenLDAP project. A copy of the 
JLDAP ldap.jar binary file is delivered with LDAPHttp distributions, and an Ant task is 
included for rebuilding the archive from the current project source. The terms of use of 
this software are defined by the files JLDAP_LICENSE and JLDAP_COPYRIGHT included in the 
distribution.

Contents
-------

This distribution should contain the following basic file structure:

./README
  This file.
./GPL
  The GNU General Public License, Version 2.
./JLDAP_LICENSE
  The OpenLDAP Public License, Version 2.7.
./JLDAP_COPYRIGHT
  The JLDAP copyright statement.
./build.xml
  The primary Ant build file.
./path.properties
  Path valued properties used within Ant build files.
./WEB-INF/
  Contains web application archive descriptors. 
./WEB-INF/classes/
  Contains all source (.java) and compiled (.class) Java class files. 
./WEB-INF/lib/
  Contains binary Java archive (.jar) library files. 
./WEB-INF/tlds/
  Contains JSP tag library descriptor (.tld) files. 
./jsp/
  Contains standard JSP (.jsp) content files. 
./extra
  Contains miscellaneous additions.

After building software from a distribution, some additional paths may be added:

./delivery/
  Complete zipped (.zip) or tarball (.tgz) files for distribution.
./javadocs/
  Generated Java API documentation.
./jldap/
  JLDAP source distribution from the OpenLDAP CVS repository.
./webapps/
  Final web application archive (.war) files.

Depending on the distribution, more paths and files may also be in place to support 
software demonstrations.

Compilation
-----------

Before compiling, ensure that your environment contains appropriate values for the 
JAVA_HOME and ANT_HOME environment variables. Change your current filesystem directory 
to the same path as this file in the distribution. To get a list of major available 
targets, execute the command:

ant -p

The default target will build the l3d.jar and sg8.jar library archive files and place 
them in the ./WEB-INF/lib/ path. To erase all built files, use the command:

ant clean

Depending on the distribution, more build files with their own targets may be included. 
You can specify their use with Ant's -f option. Feel free to modify any of the build 
files to suit your needs.


Notes
-----

In order to suppress the many warnings that come from not using the Generics feature of 
Java 1.5, LDAPHttp software is compiled with the -nowarn option.

The JLDAP refresh compiles a subset of the classes provided in the distribution to 
reduce the resulting file size and avoid dependency issues. Also, the JLDAP compilation 
currently sets the source argument to version 1.4 in order to avoid an unresolved issue 
with the new 'enum' keyword.

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Thanks for your interest in LDAPHttp.