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BuildYourOwn

Building the Client From Downloaded Source


If you would like to build your own stand-alone minimal webapp client from original source, instructions for doing so follow below.

Instructions for building the entire SilentVault Spark Jabber client and plugin can be found here.

If you would prefer to download and run a client built by us as a signed Java webstart application, please see this page. Note that the main SilentVault Spark client includes much more functionality than this minimalist webapp client. You can obtain the prebuilt Spark client here.

Assemble Your Tools

To build the client you will need the following:

  1. OpenGPG or equivalent, to verify the signature on the source archive.
  2. The Java JDK (development kit) version 7u181 or higher. Note this is different than the JRE (runtime environment). If you need help, see: Obtaining Java.
  3. The Apache Ant build tool, rev 1.7.1 or higher. You can obtain this in Linux distros, or look here.

Obtain Source

You can download the source code and build tools from our site, in ZIP format: SVClient-0.7.3.zip. Make sure that you also download the corresponding detached signature file, SVClient-0.7.3.zip.asc, so that you can verify the signature on the archive (see below)

Verify Signature

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Third Party Source

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Compiling the Source

Unpack the archive into a user directory, and make sure you have ant and javac in your path. The instructions which ant will follow to build your jar file are found in build.xml. To compile the client for standalone use, run this command in a shell window: 

ant standalone

That should be all there is to it! Note that if your specific compiler issues any warnings (it shouldn't), you can disable any or all of the "compilerarg" lint directives in build.xml to silence them.

When you have completed the compilation, you will have a file called ./target/silentvault-client.jar.

Running the Client

The client can be invoked simply by using java -jar ./target/silentvault-client.jar. However, by default the client only knows about the test network gateway (ofs.voucher-safe.org:5233). In order to tell it where to look for live gateways, some properties need to be passed to it. The file gateway.properties contains these, along with some explanatory comments. To invoke the client giving it this properties file, you can use this command in a shell window (from your build directory): 

java -jar target/silentvault-client.jar -p gateway.properties

For convenience, there is a shell script (sh/bash) which does this, found in runSVclient.sh.

Click here for information on "sandbox" testing.

Handling Updates

Note that in future gateways into the live network may change, either because gateways (or PageKites to gateways) are added or subtracted, or because whole additional publisher networks are added to the Voucher-Safe system. When and if this occurs, you will need to edit the gateway.properties file to reflect the changes. (Such changes will be announced on this website.)

In regard to client updates, you will need to monitor this page for updates, and rebuild your client when they appear. The current revision is: 0.7.3, dated 31 August, 2018. Note that the pre-built web-app version will always be updated at the same time, and will automatically manage updates for you, if you install that version.

Comments on these instructions are welcomed.

Please report bugs or ask questions in the forum. (You'll need to register to post.)