Activiti

Homepage: http://activiti.org

Activiti is a light-weight workflow and Business Process Management (BPM) Platform targeted at business people, developers and system admins. Its core is a super-fast and rock-solid BPMN 2 process engine for Java. It's open-source and distributed under the Apache license. Activiti runs in any Java application, on a server, on a cluster or in the cloud. It integrates perfectly with Spring, it is extremely lightweight and based on simple concepts.

NOTE: We moved to the master branch all the content of the development branch that we were using to design and code the next major version of the project. If you want to contribute with version 6.x please look at the 6.x branch.

If you want to read more about our Repositories structure you can read our GitBook.

Configuring IntelliJ

• Force language level 11, to fail-fast when (accidentally) using features available only in newer Java versions.

  • Open menu File, menu item Project Structure
  • Click list item Modules, for each module, tab Sources, combobox Language level should be automatically set to 11 ...

• Avoid that changes in some resources are ignored in the next run/debug (and you are forced to use mvn)

  • Open menu File, menu item Settings or menu IntelliJ IDEA, menu item Preferences... if on a Mac
  • Click tree item Compiler, textfield Resource patterns: change to !?*.java (remove other content)

• Avoid a StackOverflowError when building

  • Open menu File, menu item Settings or menu IntelliJ IDEA, menu item Preferences... if on a Mac
  • Click tree item Compiler, tree item Java Compiler, textfield Additional command line parameters
  • Add -J-Xss1024k

• Recommended code style: use the Google Java Style Guide with editorconfig

  • Download the IntelliJ code style xml from: [https://google.github.io/styleguide/intellij-java-google-style.xml]
  • Open menu File, menu item Settings or menu IntelliJ IDEA, menu item Preferences... if on a Mac
  • Click tree item Code Style, click cogwheel and select Import scheme, then IntelliJ code style xml
  • Browse where you downloaded the xml and open it. Check that GoogleStyle is the active scheme.
    • Note: IntelliJ IDEA doesn't format your code automatically. You have to press Ctrl+Alt+L keyboard combination to trigger auto formatting when coding is done.
  • There's an .editorconfig what has definition for indents, file encoding, line endings.
  • If you disable it, you need to set the file encoding and number of spaces correctly manually.
  • Eclipse code style xml: [https://google.github.io/styleguide/eclipse-java-google-style.xml]
  • Eclipse needs editorconfig-eclipse plugin in order to support EditorConfig files.

• Set manually the correct file encoding (UTF-8 except for properties files) and end-of-line characters (unix):

  • Open menu File, menu item Settings or menu IntelliJ IDEA, menu item Preferences... if on a Mac
  • Click tree item Code Style, tree item General
    • Combobox Line separator (for new files): Unix
  • Click tree item File Encodings
    • Combobox IDE Encoding: UTF-8
    • Combobox Default encoding for properties files: ISO-8859-1
      • Note: normal i18n properties files must be in ISO-8859-1 as specified by the java ResourceBundle contract.

• Set manually the correct number of spaces when pressing tab:

  • Open menu File, menu item Settings or menu IntelliJ IDEA, menu item Preferences... if on a Mac
  • Click tree item Code Style, tree item General
  • Click tab Java
    • Checkbox Use tab character: off
    • Textfield Tab size: 4
    • Textfield Indent: 4
    • Textfield Continuation indent: 8
  • Open tab XML
    • Checkbox Use tab character: off
    • Textfield Tab size: 2
    • Textfield Indent: 2
    • Textfield Continuation indent: 4

• Set the correct file headers (do not include @author or a meaningless javadoc):

  • Open menu File, menu item Settings or menu IntelliJ IDEA, menu item Preferences... if on a Mac
  • Click tree item File templates, tab Includes, list item File Header
  • Remove the line @author Your Name.
    • We do not accept @author lines in source files, see FAQ below.
  • Remove the entire javadoc as automatically templated data is meaningless.

• Set the correct license header

  • Open menu File, menu item Settings or menu IntelliJ IDEA, menu item Preferences... if on a Mac
  • Click tree item Copyright, tree item Copyright profiles
    • Click import button to import the Copyright profile
    • Select the file: Alfresco_Software.xml
  • Click tree item Copyright
    • Combobox Default project copyright: Alfresco Software

FAQ

• Why do you not accept @author lines in your source code?

  • Because the author tags in the java files are a maintenance nightmare

    • A large percentage is wrong, incomplete or inaccurate.
    • Most of the time, it only contains the original author. Many files are completely refactored/expanded by other authors.
    • Git is accurate, that is the canonical source to find the correct author.

  • Because the author tags promote code ownership, which is bad in the long run.

    • If people work on a piece they perceive as being owned by someone else, they tend to:
      • only fix what they are assigned to fix, instead of everything that's broken
      • discard responsibility if that code doesn't work properly
      • be scared of stepping on the feet of the owner.

  • Credit to the authors is given:

    • with Open Hub which also has statistics
    • in the GitHub web interface.

Development commands

Add License header

To format files with the required license:

mvn license:format

Checkstyle

To check if your code style respect all the rules:

mvn checkstyle:check -DskipCheckstyle=false

Site

To generate the maven site:

mvn clean site site:stage

the site will be generated at: target/staging/index.html

CI/CD

Running on GitHub Actions, requires the following secrets to be set:

Name	Description
NEXUS_USERNAME	Internal Maven repository username
NEXUS_PASSWORD	Internal Maven repository password
GITHUB_TOKEN	GitHub token