Chapter 2
Installing and Running GATE [#]

2.1 Downloading GATE [#]

To download GATE point your web browser at http://gate.ac.uk/download/.

2.2 Installing and Running GATE [#]

GATE 3.1 will run anywhere that supports Java version 1.4.2 or later, including Solaris, Linux and Windows platforms. GATE 4 and 5 require Java 5.0. We don’t run tests on other platforms, but have had reports of successful installs elsewhere. We are also testing released installers on MacOS X.

2.2.1 The Easy Way [#]

The easy way to install is to use one of the platform-specific installers (created using the excellent IzPack). Download a ‘platform-specific installer’ and follow the instructions it gives you. Once the installation is complete, you can start GATE Developer using gate.exe (Windows) or GATE.app (Mac) in the top-level installation directory, or gate.sh in the bin directory (other platforms).

2.2.2 The Hard Way (1) [#]

Download the Java-only release package or the binary build snapshot, and follow the instructions below.

Prerequisites:

• A conforming Java 2 environment,
  • version 1.4.2 or above for GATE 3.1
  • version 5.0 for GATE 4.0 beta 1 or later.

  available free from Sun Microsystems or from your UNIX supplier. (We test on various Sun JDKs on Solaris, Linux and Windows XP.)

• Binaries from the GATE distribution you downloaded: gate.jar, lib/ext/guk.jar (Unicode editing support) and a suitable script to start Ant, e.g. ant.sh or ant.bat. These are held in a directory called bin like this:

  .../bin/               gate.jar               ant.sh               ant.bat

  You will also need the lib directory, containing various libraries that GATE depends on.

• An open mind and a sense of humour.

Using the binary distribution:

• Unpack the distribution, creating a directory containing jar files and scripts.
• To run GATE Developer: on Windows, start a Command Prompt window, change to the directory where you unpacked the GATE distribution and run ‘bin/ant.bat run’; on UNIX run ‘bin/ant run’.
• To embed GATE as a library (GATE Embedded), put gate.jar and all the libraries in the lib directory in your CLASSPATH and tell Java that guk.jar is an extension (-Djava.ext.dirs=path-to-guk.jar).

The Ant scripts that start GATE Developer (ant.bat or ant) require you to set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to point to the top level directory of your JAVA installation. The value of GATE_CONFIG is passed to the system by the scripts using either a -i command-line option, or the Java property gate.config.

2.2.3 The Hard Way (2): Subversion [#]

The GATE code is maintained in a Subversion repository. You can use a Subversion client to check out the source code – the most up-to-date version of GATE is the trunk:
svn checkout https://gate.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gate/gate/trunk gate

Once you have checked out the code you can build GATE using Ant (see Section 2.5)

You can browse the complete Subversion repository online at http://gate.svn.sourceforge.net/gate.

2.3 Using System Properties with GATE [#]

During initialisation, GATE reads several Java system properties in order to decide where to find its configuration files.

Here is a list of the properties used, their default values and their meanings:

gate.home

sets the location of the GATE install directory. This should point to the top level directory of your GATE installation. This is the only property that is required. If this is not set, the system will display an error message and them it will attempt to guess the correct value.

gate.plugins.home

points to the location of the directory containing installed plugins (a.k.a. CREOLE directories). If this is not set then the default value of {gate.home}/plugins is used.

gate.site.config

points to the location of the configuration file containing the site-wide options. If not set this will default to {gate.home}/gate.xml. The site configuration file must exist!

gate.user.config

points to the file containing the user’s options. If not specified, or if the specified file does not exist at startup time, the default value of gate.xml (.gate.xml on Unix platforms) in the user’s home directory is used.

gate.user.session

points to the file containing the user’s saved session. If not specified, the default value of gate.session (.gate.session on Unix) in the user’s home directory is used. When starting up GATE Developer, the session is reloaded from this file if it exists, and when exiting GATE Developer the session is saved to this file (unless the user has disabled ‘save session on exit’ in the configuration dialog). The session is not used when using GATE Embedded.

load.plugin.path

is a path-like structure, i.e. a list of URLs separated by ‘;’. All directories listed here will be loaded as CREOLE plugins during initialisation. This has similar functionality with the the -d command line option.

gate.builtin.creole.dir

is a URL pointing to the location of GATE’s built-in CREOLE directory. This is the location of the creole.xml file that defines the fundamental GATE resource types, such as documents, document format handlers, controllers and the basic visual resources that make up GATE. The default points to a location inside gate.jar and should not generally need to be overridden.

When using GATE Embedded, you can set the values for these properties before you call Gate.init(). Alternatively, you can set the values programmatically using the static methods setGateHome(), setPluginsHome(), setSiteConfigFile(), etc. before calling Gate.init(). See the Javadoc documentation for details. If you want to set these values from the command line you can use the following syntax for setting gate.home for example:

java -Dgate.home=/my/new/gate/home/directory -cp... gate.Main

When running GATE Developer, you can set the properties by creating a file build.properties in the top level GATE directory. In this file, any system properties which are prefixed with ‘run.’ will be passed to GATE. For example, to set an alternative user config file, put the following line in build.properties¹:

run.gate.user.config=${user.home}/alternative-gate.xml

This facility is not limited to the GATE-specific properties listed above, for example the following line changes the default temporary directory for GATE (note the use of forward slashes, even on Windows platforms):

run.java.io.tmpdir=d:/bigtmp

2.4 Configuring GATE [#]

When GATE Developer is started, or when Gate.init() is called from GATE Embedded, GATE loads various sorts of configuration data stored as XML in files generally called something like gate.xml or .gate.xml. This data holds information such as:

• whether to save settings on exit;
• what fonts GATE Developer should use;

This type of data is stored at two levels (in order from general to specific):

• the site-wide level, which by default is located the gate.xml file in top level directory of the GATE installation (i.e. the GATE home. This location can be overridden by the Java system property gate.site.config;
• the user level, which lives in the user’s HOME directory on UNIX or their profile directory on Windows (note that parts of this file are overwritten when saving user settings). The default location for this file can be overridden by the Java system property gate.user.config.

Where configuration data appears on several different levels, the more specific ones overwrite the more general. This means that you can set defaults for all GATE users on your system, for example, and allow individual users to override those defaults without interfering with others.

Configuration data can be set from the GATE Developer GUI via the ‘Options’ menu, ‘Configuration’ choice. The user can change the appearance of the GUI (via the Appearance submenu), which includes the options of font and the ‘look and feel’. The ‘Advanced’ submenu enables the user to include annotation features when saving the document and preserving its format, to save the selected Options automatically on exit, and to save the session automatically on exit. The Input Methods menu (available via the Options menu) enables the user to change the default language for input. These options are all stored in the user’s .gate.xml file.

When using GATE Embedded, you can also set the site config location using Gate.setSiteConfigFile(File) prior to calling Gate.init().

2.5 Building GATE [#]

Note that you don’t need to build GATE unless you’re doing development on the system itself.

Prerequisites:

• A conforming Java environment as above.
• A copy of the GATE sources and the build scripts – either the SRC distribution package from the nightly snapshots or a copy of the code obtained through Subversion (see Section 2.2.3).
• An appreciation of natural beauty.

GATE now includes a copy of the ANT build tool which can be accessed through the scripts included in the bin directory (use ant.bat for Windows 98 or ME, ant.cmd for Windows NT, 2000 or XP, and ant.sh for Unix platforms).

To build gate, cd to gate and:

1. Type:
   bin/ant
2. [optional] To test the system:
   bin/ant test
   
3. [optional] To make the Javadoc documentation:
   bin/ant doc
   
4. You can also run GATE Developer using Ant, by typing:
   bin/ant run
5. To see a full list of options type: bin/ant help
   

(The details of the build process are all specified by the build.xml file in the gate directory.)

You can also use a development environment like Borland JBuilder (click on the gate.jpx file), but note that it’s still advisable to use ant to generate documentation, the jar file and so on. Also note that the run configurations have the location of a gate.xml site configuration file hard-coded into them, so you may need to change these for your site.

2.6 Troubleshooting [#]

Note that the gate.bat script uses javaw.exe to run GATE which means that you will see no console for the java process. If you have problems starting GATE and you would like to be able to see the console to check for messages then you should edit the gate.bat script and replace javaw.exe with java.exe in the definition of the JAVA environment variable.

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