Installing Drools Planner in Eclipse

Question

I am almost a newbie in Java technologies (exluding programming foundation at school). But I am interested in NP problems and I want to have a look into Drools Planner.

So I am trying to install Drool Planner following this tutorial.

Steps:

• installing Eclipse (at least 3.4.*): done, version: 3.4.2 already installed in my computer (Windows XP PRO, ok, it's my old good donkey).
• installing GEF: done
• installing Drools plugins: FAILED.

I have downloaded and unzipped the archive into my Eclipse root directory. The tutorial states that restarting Eclipse after unzipping the archive in the proper directory should have enabled Drools Perspective.

But no Drools perspective is available. Where am I wrong?

Answer 1

Eventually I followed the instructions in ReadMeDroolsJbpmTools.txt included in the droolsjbpm-tools-distribution-5.4.0.Final.zip archive:

• Open Eclipse.
• Open the menu "Help", menu item "Install new software..."
• Click on the button "Add..." to add a new software site.
• Fill in the name "drools local update site"
• Click on the button "Local..." and select ".../binaries/org.drools.updatesite"
• Select all the plugins. Click the buttons "Next" and "Finish".

Now I succeed in opening Drool Perspective.

Answer 2

That's the Drools Expert documentation. Instead, follow this section of the Drools Planner documentation. That section and the following section 1.4.2. Run the examples in an IDE (IntelliJ, Eclipse, NetBeans) should have you running a Drools Planner example in Eclipse in no time.

Installing the drools-eclipse-plugin is completely optional, although it's handy to have code completion when editing DRL files. Either way, focus first on get the examples running.

Answer 3

In newer versions of Eclipse (>= Indigo) and Drools (>= 5.5) both tutorials don't work. Wether installing Drools by update-site nor by Eclipse Marketplace nor by extracting downloaded zip file.

The only solution that worked for me:

First steps like stated in tutorials 1. Installing GEF using "install new software" 2. Installing Drools packages using "install new software"

Now no Drools features appear in eclipse. Thus:

1. Close Eclipse and restart with parameter "-console"

2. Type "install http://download.jboss.org/drools/release/5.5.0.Final/org.drools.updatesite/plugins/org.drools.eclipse_5.5.0.Final.jar" (On newer versions change url properly) --> Eclipse will give you a bundle id

3. Type "start [bundle id]"