Polarion Software Weblog

The image folder is hidden in the Polarion installation. When you customize Polarion, you will need the images e.g. when you look up new icons for workflow states or work item types.

To make them easily accessible, you could copy the images to subversion and check out the images in the Apache configuration. By adding some statements in the Apache configuration, access to the icons becomes easy. Another advantage is you can modify the images and check them in. All changes will still be persistent if Polarion needs to be updated.

Location of the images:

<Polarion installation folder>/Polarion/plugins/ com.polarion.java2js.server_3.1.0/webapp/ria/images

Copy this folder and it content to subversion. Check out the folder in the apache configuration, for example in the subfolder “images”. You could also add a cron job (or a task in Windows) to do a nightly update on that folder.

To publish the folder in Apache, use the following section at the end of the httpd.conf:

Alias /images/ “C:/Programme/Polarion 3.1/bundled/apache_2.0.59/images/”

<Directory “C:/Polarion/bundled/apache_2.0.59/images”>
Options Indexes MultiViews
IndexOptions +FoldersFirst +IgnoreCase
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

<FilesMatch “Thumbs.db”>
Order deny,allow
Deny from All
</FilesMatch>
</Directory>

Best Wishes
Matthias

Polarion Software recently released version 1.5 of FastTrack - a free Tracker plugin for Eclipse that provides robust, stand-alone tracking in the Eclipse IDE, also serves as an off-line client for the Polarion ALM platform.

Major new features include:

• Support for Subversive from Eclipse (i.e. runs with most actual versions of Subversive from Eclipse.org)
• Support for Multiple assignees for work items
• Support for multi-line custom fields
• Work Records
• Works with Polarion ALM 3.x

Users of previous FastTrack versions can get the update through the Eclipse update feature.

First-time users can download from the Polarion Community site at:
www.polarion.org/index.php?page=download&project=fasttrack

Polarion Software, as a member of the Eclipse Foundation, has joined the Eclipse distro program and now hosts a couple of Eclipse distros, including one that bundles the Eclipse SDK and Subversive Team Provider (we’re the sponsor of this Eclipse Technology Project, in case you didn’t know).

Polarion is pleased to join the ranks of other foundation members hosting Eclipse distros and tools for the community at:
www.eclipse.org/downloads/distros.php

When you run Polarion for a while and want to hibernate your computer, sometimes you get the message “Insufficient System Resources Exist to Complete the API”. This is typical the case on computers where you develop customizations for Polarion. The problem will not occur on servers, since they will normally never hibernate.
This problem occurs because the Windows kernel power manager cannot obtain the memory resources that are required to prepare the computer to hibernate.
Polarion utilizes a lot of memory and the garbage collector gives it back to the operating system . Then the main memory gets cluttered and the hibernation fails. There is a hotfix available from Microsoft, which can be downloaded. Just look up the article “KB909095”.

Best Wishes
Matthias

To start Polarion as service you should perform following steps:

• Download the Windows XP Professional Ressource Kit. There is a version, which Microsoft request Money for it. I searched with Google and found a resource kit for Windows Server 2003, which applies also for Windows XP Professional, which can be downloaded from the WEB.
• It contains a little tool, called sc.exe. It gives the possibility to install programs as service. Use the following arguments:
  sc create Polarion binpath= “C:\Programme\Polarion 3.1\polarion\polarion.exe” type= share start= auto depend= Apache2Polarion
  The identifier of the parameters include the ‘=’ at the end. The space to the parameter value is mandatory. The command inserts also the dependency to apache appropriately.
• The so created service will terminate when you log off. To hinder this, you need to add the option “-Xrs” to the java environment. With this option java will not listen to the terminal. The options for the java.exe are specified in the file polarion.ini file in
  /polarion/polarion.ini. Just append a new line with the option.
• In the next step I opened the Computer Manager and edited the newly created service. I assigned it to the local account “Polarion” and inserted the password of that account. The Computer Manager itself added the right for the account to run services.
  Pay attention that the account is set to “may not change password” and “password never expires”.

That’s it. You are now ready to start the service from the Computer Manager. It will not die, when you log off, it will start when the computer is started.

Attention: The Computer Manager will complain that Polarion does not start. Polarion takes a lot of time to start. The Computer Manager should be more patient, but it is not. Check the Task Manager to see Polarion running. It is a java.exe running on the account you assigned it to.

Attention II: The Computer Manager will not be able to stop Polarion, because it believes Polarion is not running. To stop Polarion you have to use the stop tool provided by Polarion.

Best Wishes
Matthias