Lets you view and/or modify the custom environment variables.

Figure 2.19. Custom Environment settings page

Use the Add... and Remove buttons to add or remove items to and from the list.

Figure 2.20. Add Custom Environment Variable

Select a variable and press the Change... button if you want to adjust an existing environment variable.

Figure 2.21. Change Custom Environment Variable

Local Overrides

Custom user variables are stored as part of your code convention and are therefore shared across a whole team. If you need to define user-specific information, e.g. to automatically add the name of the developer who creates a class, this is possible via the local overrides file ".user.properties".

When found in the Jalopy settings directory, the variables defined here will override any other custom or system variables. The overrides file uses the common java.util.Properties format.

On a typical Windows XP installation, the local overrides file for user John Doo would be

C:\Documents and Settings\John Doo\.jalopy\.user.properties

On Linux it might be

/home/John Doo/.jalopy/.user.properties

Further information about the Jalopy settings directory can be found in Chapter 2, Configuration.

To define/override the variables "author" and "division", the local overrides file might look like this:

author=John Doo
division=IT_DEV_AR

Since 1.6

Please note that the environment may be overwritten manually using the Console and Ant Plug-ins as well. Please refer to the Plug-in documentation.

Lets you view your Java system environment variables.

All system environment variables are automatically available as well, but cannot be changed from within Jalopy.

Figure 2.22. System environment variables

Additionally, Jalopy provides some local variables that are automatically set depending on the execution context.

The current list of valid local variables reads as follows:

Once defined, variables can then be enclosed with dollar signs to form variable expressions. Variable expressions thus take the form $[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_.\\-]*$.

During printing these expressions will be interpolated and the value of the variable inserted into the output file.

//===============================================================
// file :       $file.name$
// project:     $project$
//
// last change: date:       $Date$
//              by:         $author$
//              revision:   $Revision$
//---------------------------------------------------------------
// copyright:   BSJT Software License (see class documentation)
//===============================================================

//===============================================================
// file :       Byte.java
// project:     bsjt-rt
//
// last change: date:       $Date$
//              by:         John Doo
//              revision:   $Revision$
//---------------------------------------------------------------
// copyright:   BSJT Software License (see class documentation)
//===============================================================

As you can see in the above example, if a variable is not defined, Jalopy won't touch the expression and simply preserves the original content. This way, the formatter works nicely with other source code tools and SCM products.

The available user and local environment variables are provided from within the context menu of the text component when customizing the different templates.

Figure 2.23. Insert variables via context menu

Please see Section 2.3.1, "Custom variables", Section 2.3.2, "System variables" and Section 2.3.3, "Local variables" for a description of the different available variable types.

Lets you define the patterns that should be used for the $date$ and $time$ expressions (see Section 2.3.3, "Local variables").

Figure 2.24. Environment Date & Time settings page

For a detailed description, the list of available patterns and further examples, please refer to the Javadoc for the java.text.SimpleDateFormat class.

Date pattern

Lets you define the pattern that is used for the $date$ variable expression (see Local variables).

The default pattern is M/d/yy which translates to something like 12/24/98.

Since 1.2

Time pattern

Lets you define the pattern that is used for the $time$ variable expression (see Local variables).

The default pattern is h:mm a which translates to something like 02:56 PM.

Since 1.2