The Run on MobileFirst Development Server command

Information about the menu command used to build and run an application or environment on the designated test server.

About this task

You use this menu option when to build the project in MobileFirst Studio and run it on the internal MobileFirst Development Server. This instance of MobileFirst Server is created automatically when you install MobileFirst Studio, and is described in The MobileFirst Development Server and the operations console.

This command name is context-sensitive in that it does not always display the name Run on MobileFirst Development Server. If we use the Configure MobileFirst Build and Deploy Target dialog to choose a different test server, the name of the server that is selected in the MobileFirst server to test applications area is displayed in the command name instead. For example, if we add a local instance of MobileFirst Server, name it "Group Test Server" and designate it as the default test server, this command appears as Run As > Run on Group Test Server. For consistency, when referring to this menu command in this IBM MobileFirst Platform Foundation user documentation, the default name of this command (Run on MobileFirst Development Server) is used throughout.

When we choose the Run As > Run on MobileFirst Development Server option, MobileFirst Studio performs the following actions:

• It starts the MobileFirst Development Server, if it is not already running.

• It builds the app and all of its included environments.

• It deploys the app to the MobileFirst Development Server (or designated test server), reporting success, failure, and any error messages in the Console view of MobileFirst Studio.

• When we open the operations console that is associated with the MobileFirst Development Server (or designated test server), that console displays the successfully deployed app and all of its environments. The console also displays detailed build and deployment messages, if required.

If we select more than one application node in the same project, all of them are built and deployed to the MobileFirst Development Server.

If the operations console is secured, an Authentication Required dialog appears, prompting you to enter the User Name and Password.

If we enter the correct credentials, the deployment continues when you click OK.

The dialog also contains a Save user credentials check box. If we select it before you click OK, the credentials are stored in Eclipse secure storage. This information can be edited in Eclipse by selecting Preferences > General > Security > Secure Storage. If we enter incorrect credentials, the deployment fails and the credentials are not saved.

We can also use this menu command to run and test individual MobileFirst environments by right-clicking on the environment in the Project Explorer and clicking Run As > Run on MobileFirst Development Server. This option runs and tests the selected environment on the designated test server.

Important: This menu command always uses as its target server the MobileFirst Server instance currently selected in the MobileFirst server to test applications area of the Configure MobileFirst Build and Deploy Target dialog. It ignores any server information that is entered in the Build the application to work with a different MobileFirst server area of the Configure MobileFirst Build and Deploy Target dialog.

OutOfMemoryError exceptions

If we get an OutOfMemoryError exception while deploying a large application to the MobileFirst Development Server, consider increasing the heap size of the server. To increase the heap size, edit the jvm.options file by double-clicking it in the Servers view in MobileFirst Studio, then either increase the value of the flag -Xmx if it already exists, or add this flag with the value 1024m if it does not exist yet: -Xmx1024m.

Parent topic: Build and deploy in MobileFirst Studio