NETSCAPE EXTENSION BUILDER

 NEB 4.0, Limited Release


Updated April 5, 2000



Requirements & Installation

See the Installation Instructions for the installation key, requirements, supported configurations, and installation instructions.


General Information

Supported Server Platform

Netscape Extension Builder 4.0 supports deployment of extensions to Netscape Application Server 4.0 Service Pack 2 and later.

Product Name

The official name of this release is Netscape Extension Builder V4.0, Limited Release

Purpose of Release

Netscape Extension Builder 4.0 is a limited release that supports deployment of extensions to Netscape Application Server 4.0.  This limited release is intended to be distributed to a limited number of customers that need to migrate their extensions from NAS 2.1 to NAS 4.0. 


New Features

Netscape Application Server 4.0 Support

Netscape Extension Builder 4.0 now supports Netscape Application Server 4.0.

Switching to GNU Tools

Netscape Extension Builder 4.0 ships with gnumake and gnucpp, rather than depending on a platform-specific make utility and preprocessor.

New Deployment Utility

Netscape Extension Builder 4.0 comes with a new integrated deployment capability for deploying extensions. This deployment feature is very similar to the one used by Netscape Application Builder 4.0 for deploying applications.

Additional Tools Support

Netscape Extension Builder 4.0 now supports Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0 and Visual Workshop C++ 5.0.


Programming Fixes

In addition to a number of internal programming fixes, the following changes have been made:

Number of methods per interface

The product now supports more than 32 methods per interface.


Programing Issues

Installing

If you cannot install NEB 4.0 check that NAS 4.0 is installed on your system and verify that older versions of NAS are uninstalled.  The installer checks for NAS 4.0 installation only.  If the installer can not locate NAS 4.0 or if you have an older version of NAS installed on your machine, installation will abort .In this case you should install either NAS 4.0 of NAB 4.0 and start installation again. If NAB 4.0 is installed, the installation will detected the embedded version of NAS that is contained by NAB 4.0.  

Launching NEB

After installation, if you cannot run Netscape Extension Builder Designer 4.0, you should verify the key you entered during installation is correct using the kregedit tool.  The Netscape Registry Editor is a stand-alone GUI tool that displays registry information for Netscape products.  The editor is installed with each instance of Netscape Application Server.

You can launch the Netscape Registry Editor by typing kregedit at the command line on Solaris machines. For Windows NT machines, select the Windows NT Start button and choose Run.  Type kregedit and click OK.  Open the following key:

SOFTWARE\Netscape\Extension Builder

Verify that the KEY entry matches the Key provided in the Installation Instructions.  Double-click the Key to open a dialog so you edit the entry, if required.

Deploying Extensions

NOTE: During the deployment process you are prompted to register the server for which you want to deploy and provide a username and password.  You must use username admin21 for all the servers for which you want to deploy an extension. For the password, you use the admin password established for a particular server.  The following procedure grants ADMIN privileges to user "admin21" in NAS.  You must complete this procedure before you can deploy your extension.

Before you can deploy an extension, you must first register the server(s) to which you want to deploy. During this process you must provide a user name and password that is authorized by that server to perform both Administration and Deployment. In preparation for deployment, you must first setup this username using the NAS Administrator.

  1. From the Start menu choose Programs and then Netscape Application Server 4.0.
    The NAS Administrator opens.
  2. In the left navigation pane, highlight the server to which you want to deploy and click the Security button.
  3. Highlight NAS Administration and click Modify near the bottom of the window.
    The Modify Access Control List dialog box appears.
  4. Click Add User or Group.
  5. In the text box highlight the username "admin21" and click OK.
  6. In the Modify Access Control List dialog, click the checkbox for user admin21.
    This grants this user ADMIN privileges for NAS Administration.
  7. Click OK.
  8. Repeat steps 3-6 to grant user "admin21" ADMIN privileges for NAS Deployment.
    You can now deploy an extension to this server.

Viewing Deployed Extensions

You may not be able to view your deployed extension in the Netscape Application Server Administratator.  However, you can view the deployed extensions in the server log and by using the Directory Server Console.

Running the Sample Applications

Before you can run the sample applications, you must first build them.  Before proceeding, stop Netscape Application Server (for Solaris you must also stop Netscape Enterprise Server (Web server)).  

Netscape Extension Builder Designer

Invalid File Format Message

When you start Netscape Extension Builder Designer or when you open an existing extension project, you might encounter a dialog box that says, "Invalid File Format." If this error occurs, you must add the GNU tools directory to your PATH variable. By default, this directory is c:\neb\gnutools_win32\bin.

Renaming an Interface

After you have named an interface you will not be able to change the its name.  

Migrating Existing Extensions

Existing extensions will run without modification using the Netscape Extension Builder 4.0 Runtime Services. However, if you rebuild an existing extension using the Netscape Extension Builder 4.0 make harness and KIDL compiler, you must make one small change to the manager coclass of your service module. Here's why. After code is generated by the KIDL compiler, the code that becomes your extension's Runtime Layer looks for your runtime class by module name. Previous versions of Netscape Extension Builder used an interface name to identify your coclass. Because of this difference, and because the Netscape Extension Builder make system will not modify your edited code, you must modify the Context registration call in the Init method of your service module manager coclass. The simplest way to make this change is to compare your Init method with the one generated by KIDL when you rebuild your extension.

Migrating a C++ extension

Find the Init() method of your manager coclass. This file would ordinarily be generated by Netscape Extension Builder as:

<NEB_ROOTDIR>\<myextension>\cpp\<service_module>\<CMyManagerClass>.cpp

Replace the String identifier used in the m_pContext->SetObject() call with the one generated by KIDL in:

<NEB_ROOTDIR>\<myextension>\cpp\gen.<service_module>\<CMyManagerClass>.cpp
 

Migrating a Java extension

Find the init() method of your manager coclass. This file would ordinarily be generated by Netscape Extension Builder as:

<NEB_ROOTDIR>\<myextension>\java\<package>\<service_module>\<CMyManagerClass>.java

Add the additional com.kivasoft.util.Util.dictionaryPut call found in the the file generated by KIDL:

<NEB_ROOTDIR>\<myextension>\java\<package>\gen.<service_module>\<CMyManagerClass>.java

Additionally, to generate IDL using prior (2.1 and 3.0) project (.gxp) files, you need to add two imports to the list of imported files for the module KIVA.  In your project file, where the imports for the module KIVA are listed, add the following lines to the end of the imports list:

import "gxiostream.idl"

import "gxinls.idl"


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