Use NetWeaver Platform as a Code Repository for Design Studio SDK

[Former Member]

Some of you might already have considered writing Design Studio plug-ins for company use. The coding however, takes places locally at your computer, making it hard to work on with several people. Of course you could set up a git repository (or similar) and upload your contents there. But why use a new service, when you can leverage what you already have? It is rather easy to use your NetWeaver Platform as a repository...

Prerequisites

• You have a working instance of Eclipse JEE, using Java 6 or 7
• You have created an Design Studio PlugIn using Design Studio SDK
• You have developer access to a NetWeaver 7.40+ system

Solution

Basically, you are going to use the BSP repository on the NetWeaver Platform and upload your Eclipse project encapsulated as a BSP application. This procedure is also used to share SAPUI5 applications on the NetWeaver Platform.

This is not going to be a step-by-step manual, I just want to share the possibility I discovered. So - upgrade your Eclipse installation with SAP plug-ins from SAP Development Tools for Eclipse. You will need ABAP Connectivity package and SAPUI5 ABAP Repository Team Provider at least - I personally use Eclipse as a fully integrated workbench for ABAP, SAPUI5 and Design Studio SDK, so I have these packages installed anyways (this is how I got the idea in the first place).

When having installed the necessary plug-ins, restart your Eclipse installation, right click your project and go to Team - Share Project...

Select SAPUI5 ABAP Repository, connect to the system and create a new BSP application, where you are going to upload your files. Once connected to the platform, you can right click your project again and upload your files via Team - Submit.

To connect to an existing application, create a new (empty) project folder, do the "Share Project..." step again and select the created BSP application. Now that you are connected, go to Team - Retrieve to update your local files from the server.

This procedure might as well work with SAP HANA, as SAP offers a team provider for HANA platform. However, I could not test this yet. Feel free to leave a comment if you managed to bring your code to HANA.

Restrictions

When using this mechanism, you will have to accept some limitations to your file structure, e.g. which sort of files can be uploaded or which line delimiters can be used. If you are not able to upload a file, please adapt it to the requested format or consider using the MIME-Repository to store this file.