Prerequisites v4 - Rhetos/Rhetos GitHub Wiki

This article describes how to install and verify the prerequisites for developing applications with Rhetos framework. This is generally a standard C#/ASP.NET development environment.

OTHER VERSIONS OF RHETOS: This article applies to Rhetos v3 and v4. For newer versions see Prerequisites.

Contents:

  1. Install prerequisites
  2. Verify the prerequisites
  3. Configure your text editor for DSL scripts (*.rhe)
  4. Read next

Install prerequisites

Prerequisites for running web applications with Rhetos framework:

  • Windows 8 or newer
  • .NET Framework 4.7.2
  • IIS with ASP.NET 4.x installed
  • Microsoft SQL Express or SQL Server 2008 or newer, or Oracle Database 11g Release 2 or newer.

Recommended application development environment (prerequisites for tutorials):

  • Visual Studio 2017 v15.7 or later. Visual Studio 2022 is recommended.
  • NuGet.exe command-line utility, download and add to the PATH environment variable
  • Git client, installed and added to the PATH environment variable
  • Text editor (recommended Visual Studio Code, SublimeText3 or Notepad++)
  • LINQPad, for testing and support. Select the latest version based on the .NET version of your application, see "Supported frameworks".
  • SQL Server Management Studio, the latest version

Verify the prerequisites

Verify IIS:

  1. Start => Run (Win+R), and then type InetMgr. The "Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager" should be opened.
  2. Start your browser, and then type http://localhost in the address. The default web site opens and should display an IIS image.

Verify command-prompt utilities:

  1. Open command-prompt and enter the following commands to check if the utilities are installed and available in the PATH environment variable:
    • nuget.exe list rhetos (it should print a list of Rhetos packages available in the online gallery)
    • git.exe --version (it should report the installed git version)

Verify Visual Studio 2019 and ASP.NET:

  1. Start "Visual Studio" as administrator (right click => Run as administrator) for IIS support.
  2. Create a new project from the template "ASP.NET Web Application (.NET Framework)" with C# and .NET Framework 4.7.2. Select the "MVC" project template and under Authentication click "Change" and select "Windows Authentication".
  3. Project Properties => Web => Change the setting "IIS Express" to "Local IIS", and click "Create Virtual Directory".
  4. Build and Start the application (F5) to check if everything is installed correctly. The ASP.NET web page should automatically open in a browser (http://localhost/WebApplicationX/).
  5. Delete the test project.

Verify the SQL Server and your development database:

  1. Start "SQL Server Management Studio" and connect to the SQL Server that you will be using for development.
  2. Create and new empty database that will be used for developing the Rhetos application.
    • Note: Each developer must have his/her own database for Rhetos application development, to avoid conflicts of deploying multiple Rhetos applications to the same database.
  3. Open a new query window on the created database and execute query: print user_name(). The query should output dbo, meaning that the user has full permissions on the database.

Verify building Rhetos from source:

  1. Use git to clone the repository https://github.com/Rhetos/Rhetos.git to a new source folder on your disk:
    • In the command prompt run git clone https://github.com/Rhetos/Rhetos.git RhetosSource
  2. Switch to git branch release-4.
    • Open command prompt in the created RhetosSource folder and run git checkout release-4
  3. Run Build.bat.
    • Verify that the last printed line is "Build.bat SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED".

Configure your text editor for DSL scripts (*.rhe)

The syntax highlighting plugins are available for the following text editors.

Visual Studio Code:

  1. Open Visual Studio Code => Press Ctrl-Shift-P => Select "Extensions: Open Extensions Folder".
  2. In the opened folder, use git to clone the https://github.com/Rhetos/RhetosVSCode repository to the subfolder "RhetosVSCode".
  3. Restart Visual Studio Code.

Visual Studio 2019 or 2022:

Visual Studio extension for Rhetos includes highlighting, autocomplete, error reporting, signature help tooltips and other features.

  1. Install the IntelliSense support for Rhetos DSL, see Installation instructions.
  2. For a better insight on build process, show Output on build:
    • Tools => Options => Projects and Solutions => General => Enable: "Show Output window when build starts".

Notepad++:

  1. Download the RhetosNppSyntaxHighlight.xml file from https://github.com/Rhetos/RhetosNPP.

  2. Open "Notepad++" => Menu "Language" => "Define your language" => Click "Import..." => Select the downloaded XML file.

  3. Optionally, configure direct build and deployment of DSL scripts from Notepad++. This is only for the development environment, and only for older Rhetos apps that contain DeployPackages.exe.

    1. Install the NppExec plugin (Plugins -> Plugin Manages ->...).
    2. F6 -> enter the path to "DeployPackages.exe" inside the Rhetos application, for example "C:\Projects\MyRhetosServer\bin\DeployPackages.exe", click "Save...", enter script name "DeployPackages". Henceforward, that action can be executed directly with CTRL-F6.
    3. For automatic analysis of deployment results: SHIFT-F6 -> "Highlight" -> enter the following table. Henceforward, a double-click on the underlined line in the log is going to directly open the file and position on the error.
    ☑ [Info At line %L%, column %C%, file '%A%' 00 00 FF ☐ ☑ ☑
    ☑ At line %L%, column %C%, file '%A%' FF 00 00 ☐ ☑ ☑
    ☑ Exception FF 00 00 ☐ ☑ ☐
    ☑ FAILED FF 00 00 ☐ ☑ ☐
    ☑ [Error]* FF 00 00 ☐ ☑ ☐
    ☑ [Info]* 00 00 FF ☐ ☑ ☐
    ☑ [Trace] Done. 00 FF 00 ☐ ☑ ☐
    ☑ SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETED 00 FF 00 ☐ ☑ ☐
    ☑ at * in %A%:line %L% 00 00 00 ☐ ☐ ☑

  4. Optionally, you can download the plug-in QuickText here. The plug-in enables you to define and use shortcuts that will be replaced with complete expressions. For example replace "ss" with "ShortString" and so on.

SublimeText3:

  1. Install the PackageControl plugin by following the instructions at https://packagecontrol.io/installation.
  2. Install the RhetosDSL sublime text package: Ctrl-Shift-P, select "install package", select "RhetosDSL".

Read next