How to install Capella and Addons ?

Capella Installation

Prerequisites Needed for Install

For a successful installation of Capella, your computer must meet the following recommended requirements:

• 64 bit computer running Windows 7/8/10, Windows Server 2008/2012/2016
• An unzip software such as 7Zip or equivalent
• 2 GHz processor
• 4 Go RAM
• 15 GB of available hard disk space

Starting with Capella 5.0, Open JDK 14 is directly embedded in the product. Having a Java environment on your machine is no longer a requirement.

If however you want to use a different JDK version, you need to modify the capella.ini file at 2 places. The first one is to add a -vm argument that points to your JDK location. The second one is to modify -Dosgi.requiredJavaVersion argument to point to your JDK version. Please refer to the following link for more information. Notice that only the embedded JDK has been field-tested.

Trouble shooting

If launching Capella in Windows OS ends up with the following pop-up, it means that your OS misses some libraries to be compatible with JDK 14.

The solution is to install this Microsoft's update according to your OS version: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2999226/update-for-universal-c-runtime-in-windows

Capella Installation Procedure

Before starting the installation, the target location of Capella must be cleaned:

1. The previous Capella version must be correctly uninstalled (See related section)
2. All manual patches/extensions must be removed
3. Download Capella and extract it in a given directory

Note : See Restriction

Verification Installation Procedure

The Capella installation is successful if the archive extraction finished without errors.

• The Capella folder should contain two folders:
  • capella: the Capella modeling workbench with the .exe of Capella
  • samples: the sample models

Multi-user installation

Capella provides different strategies for supporting multi-user installs. Each strategy is deployed based on three important locations:

• The install area: the place where Capella is installed.
• The configuration area: the place where Capella stores runtime meta-data (such as the set of installed plugins).
• The instance area: the place where users store data.

Strategy 1 - Private install

Single user install. This is the most basic configuration. Nothing needs to be set up.

Particularities:

• The configuration area is by default the configuration directory in the Capella installation folder.

Setup:

• Enabled by default, nothing to do.

Strategy 2 - Shared install

Multi user shared install.

Particularities:

• The users share the same install area, but manage themselves the configuration area.
• The users must clean their configuration area each time the set of plugins is modified.

Setup:

• Either in capella.ini or config.ini file, add the argument osgi.configuration.area=@user.home/path/to/user/configuration .

Strategy 3 - Shared configuration

Multi user shared configuration install.

Particularities:

• The users share the same install area and a common configuration area (called master configuration area), and have read only rights.
• The system administrator must initialize the master configuration area (by default the configuration directory in the Capella installation folder).

Prerequisites:

• The administrator must do the setup operations with administrator rights!

Setup:

• For normal users: In capella.ini add the argument osgi.configuration.area=@user.home/path/to/user/configuration .
• For administrator: create a admin.ini file, having the same content as capella.ini in which the line osgi.configuration.area is removed, and launch Capella referencing the admin.ini file.

Strategy 4 - Multi-level shared configuration

Multi level user shared configuration install.

Particularities:

• This is similar to Strategy 3, except that instead of sharing the master configuration area, we can share intermediate configuration areas.
• Each configuration area is suitable for a specific working environment (e.g. with different plugins install).

Setup:

• The system administrator initializes the master configuration area (by default the configuration directory in the Capella installation folder).

• The working environment administrators initialize their local shared configurations by adding the argument -Dosgi.configuration.area=path/to/shared/configuration to their own custom .ini file.

• Users configure their capella.ini to point to the shared configuration area of the working environment that they belong to, as follows:
  • -Dosgi.sharedConfiguration.area=path/to/shared/configuration
  • -Dosgi.configuration.cascaded=true

Workaround to open the Help Content when there is problem with the browser

Sometimes due to security policy, the web browser has problem on opening local host web pages. This is the case of the Help Content page when it is accessed via the 127.0.0.1 IP address. Here are 2 possible workarounds to overcome this problem:

• In the URL, replace 127.0.0.1 by localhost.
• Copy the URL and paste it in another web browser without restriction.

Addons Installation

There are 3 ways to install addons :

• Simple installation
  • Install the addons directly in the dropins folder of Capella :
    • Unzip the archive of the addon in your Capella "dropins" directory
• External installation
  • Install the addons in an external directory and configure Capella to get them from this specific directory :
    • Unzip the archive of the addon in a directory
    • Add -Dorg.eclipse.equinox.p2.reconciler.dropins.directory=<myAddonsDirectory> at the end of the capella.ini file (after -vm)
• Multiple contexts installation
  • Create several contexts with specific addons and allow users to launch Capella on one or another context :
    • Create contexts directories (copy capella.ini from Capella and unzip the needed addons in a dropins folder).
    • For each context, change the capella.ini file as follows:

• For Context_A, add the following lines at the end of the capella.ini file (after -vm)

• For Context_B, add the following lines at the end of the capella.ini file (after -vm)

• Create shortcuts to launch Capella using the capella.ini file stored in the expected context:
  • For context A: <CAPELLA_INSTALLATION_DIR>\capella\capella.exe --launcher.ini D:\CapellaContexts\Context_A\capella.ini
  • For context B: <CAPELLA_INSTALLATION_DIR>\capella\capella.exe --launcher.ini D:\CapellaContexts\Context_B\capella.ini

The extensions for Capella requires the installation of the following software:

• Capella : For the Capella installation, please refer to this guide

Note:Make sure that the addon/extension is compatible with your current version of Capella.

Addons

The installation procedure is the same for all addons.

As Dropin

To manually install your addon:

• Download the addon as a dropin
• Extract the contents of the downloaded archive into <CAPELLA_INSTALLATION_DIR>/capella/dropins directory

Check that the extraction process has finished without error.

• Start Capella

As Update Site

• Download the addon as an update site
• Start Capella
• Open Help using the menu toolbar
• Select Install New Software
• A wizard is displayed
• Click on Add button
• Click on Archive... button
• Select the downloaded addon archive and press OK
• Give it a name and press OK
• Click on Select All button then Next
• Agree and click on Finish
• Restart when prompted

Verification

The following procedure for verifying the successful installation of addons, assumes that Capella is well installed and fully functional.

Plugins Verification

• Start Capella with the option -clean. It forces the application to clear the cached data and to rebuild its configuration after installing a plug-in.
• Open Help using the menu toolbar
• Select About Capella
• Select Installation Details
• Select Plugins tab
• Scroll down the list
• Check that the plugins that correspond to the add-on are displayed.
• Open Error Log view and verify there is not any error message relating to the installed add-on.
• If no problem happens, remove this -clean parameter to avoid starting performance issues for next times.

Restriction