Getting Started

beaTunes uses Maven 3 as its build infrastructure. To get going quickly, start with installing the latest Maven 3 release.
If you are unfamiliar with Maven, please take the time to read one of the many getting started with Maven guides.

Once you have Maven 3 installed, clone the plugin-samples repository from GitHub . It contains the keytocomment sample project that you can use as a skeleton for you own projects.

keytocomment follows the typical Maven conventions. i.e. it has a pom.xml you should be able to open with your favorite IDE (e.g. IntelliJ IDEA).

Once you have an IDE project, getting an overview is a little easier. Also, Maven should have already downloaded all necessary dependencies plus the corresponding javadocs for you. Should you not use Maven, please download the javadocs from here or browse them online.

Looking at the sources you will find that a beaTunes plugin is much like a regular JAR. The most important difference is the plugin descriptor /META-INF/plugin.xml. More about that here.

To build the plugin from the command line, type:

mvn clean install

If all goes well, you can find the build product in the target sub-directory. To install it, follow the directions in the corresponding knowledgebase article.

Now restart beaTunes and check whether your plugin shows up. If it doesn't, the first place to look is the logs.

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Please take a look at the beaTlet examples. Since you are coding against the same API, they all apply to Java plugins as well.