Working with the Source Code

The source code of all WSO2 products as well as the scripts that are used for building WSO2 products are maintained in GitHub repositories. If you are a developer, you can easily clone the source code from these Git repositories, and if required, you can do modifications and build a customized product on your own.

See the following topics for instructions on how to work with WSO2 Git repositories:

Identifying WSO2 Git Repositories

In GitHub, the WSO2 source code is organized into separate repositories, and each WSO2 product is built using several of these repositories. Therefore, if you are interested in editing the source code and building a customized product, you need to first identify the Git repositories that you require.

The Git repositories used by WSO2 products are of two categories: 

• Feature repositories: A feature repository consists of the source code relevant to a particular component. Each WSO2 product release is built using combinations of these feature repositories. Therefore, if you want to do modifications to a particular function in a product, you need to clone the Git repositories relevant to that function. Note that each repository will also consist of Tag IDs, which corresponds to the tag that was used for a particular product release. If you want to know more about other component repositories and the tags used for a product release, send an email to dev@wso2.org.
   

• Product-build repository: A product-build repository consists of the build scripts and profiles that are used for building the product. It also includes the Integration test cases. You can simply clone this repository tag to your computer and build it to get a standard product pack. When you build a product-build repository, all the component repositories that are required for that product release will be automatically fetched from Nexus. See the topic on Using Maven to build Git repositories.

Cloning a Git repository

Given below are the steps that you need to follow in order to clone a Git repository to your computer.

1. Clone the repository, so that the files that are in the WSO2 Git repository are available on your computer:

   git clone <DEPENDENT_REPOSITORY_URL> <LOCAL_FOLDER_PATH> 
   
   For example, clone the carbon-commons repository, which is in the WSO2 Git repository, to a folder named CC_SOURCE_HOME on your computer:
   git clone https://github.com/wso2/carbon-commons.git /Users/testuser/Documents/CC_SOURCE_HOME 

2. Navigate to the folder in your computer to which the code base is cloned:
   cd <DEPENDENT_REPOSITORY_FOLDER_PATH> 
   
   Example:
   cd /Users/testuser/Documents/CC_SOURCE_HOME

3. Clone the dependent repository tag that corresponds to the version of the code base:  
git checkout -b <REMOTE_BRANCH/TAG> <LOCAL_BRANCH>


   The local branch name should be identical to the remote branch name.

   For example, if you want to download the carbon-commons repository tag that was used for the WSO2 AS 5.3.0 release, you need to clone the v4.4.7 tag:

   git checkout -b v4.4.7 v4.4.7

Building a WSO2 product from source

As explained above in the section on identifying WSO2 Git repositories, you can easily build a product pack by building the product-build Git repository on your computer. However, if you have modified any of the feature repositories that are used for this product, you need to first build those feature repositories before building the product-build repository. Given below are the steps you need to follow.

1. Build all the feature repositories that you have cloned to your computer and edited. Be sure that you build the repositories in the correct order. Email dev@wso2.org to get help.

2. Once you have built the feature repositories, build the product-build repository that you have cloned to your computer.

   When you build the product repository, Maven will first check in the local Maven repository on your computer and fetch the repositories that you built in Step 1. Maven will then fetch the remaining dependent repositories from Nexus. This process will give you a new product pack with your changes. 

   You can find the new binary pack (ZIP file) in the <PRODUCT_REPOSITORY_HOME>/modules/distribution/target directory.

Using Maven to build Git repositories

You can use Maven to build the Git repositories that you clone to your computer. 

Use one of the following Maven commands to build your repositories: