AgE 2.7 : Getting started

Created by Daniel Krzywicki, last modified on Oct 17, 2012

In order to install and use the AgE platform, all you need is some basic knowledge of maven.

Generate a new project 

The easiest way to quickly set up your own AgE projects is to use one of our maven archetypes. Simply paste the following into your command line:

mvn archetype:generate -DarchetypeCatalog=http://age.iisg.agh.edu.pl/maven2/

You will be asked to chose an available archetype. Right now, the only one is a simple helloworld example:

Choose archetype:
1: http://age.iisg.agh.edu.pl/maven2/ -> org.jage.archetypes:helloworld (jAgE helloworld archetype)
Choose a number or apply filter (format: [groupId:]artifactId, case sensitive contains): : 1

All that is left is to specify the attributes of your maven project and choose a version of AgE to use (or let a default be chosen):

Define value for property 'groupId': : com.company 
Define value for property 'artifactId': : project
Define value for property 'version': 1.0-SNAPSHOT: :
Define value for property 'package': com.mycompany: :
[INFO] Using property: jage-version = 2.6.0
Confirm properties configuration:
groupId: com.mycompany
artifactId: test
version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT
package: com.mycompany
jage-version: 2.6.0
 Y: : Y

A new project have been generated in the directory project

You can also paste the following one-liner:

mvn archetype:generate -B -DarchetypeCatalog=http://age.iisg.agh.edu.pl/maven2/ -DarchetypeGroupId=org.jage.archetypes -DarchetypeArtifactId=helloworld -DgroupId=com.company -DartifactId=project -Dversion=1.0-SNAPSHOT -Djage-version=2.6.0

Project Layout

The layout of the generated project is as follows:

project
|-pom.xml
|-applications
  |pom.xml
  |-src/main/resources
    |-base.xml
    |-helloworld.xml
    |-log4j.xml
|-solutions
  |-pom.xml
  |-src/main/java/com/mycompany/
    |-HelloWorldSimpleAgent.java

An Age project consists of two modules:

  • The solution module contains all your code: custom agents, actions, strategies, etc.
  • The applications module contains the configuration of your computations. 

All the dependencies between these modules and the AgE platform are described in the corresponding pom files and are handled by maven. You can also put any common maven configuration in the root pom of the project.

Building the project and starting the computation

In order to build the project, simply run the install maven goal in the root directory of the project:

cd project
mvn install

The computation can be easily started using the exec maven plugin. Go into the applications directory and run the following:

cd applications
mvn -q exec:java