01

Exercise 01 - Installing the CAP related tools

In this exercise you'll install all the tools required to work comfortably with the Node.js flavor of CAP in a local environment.

Successfully completing this exercise relies on the hardware and software prerequisites published for this CodeJam. These prerequisites describe the requirement for some software preinstalled; this includes VS Code and Node.js. This exercise will focus on tools relating to both of these. (If you haven't already installed Node.js, we recommend version 10 (LTS).

Steps

After completing these steps you'll have a working local environment for development of CAP based projects with Node.js.

1. Install the CDS command line tool

The CDS command line tool is the heart of everything you do when developing CAP services locally. It is Node.js based and comes in the form of an NPM package (which further depends on other packages). The package and its dependencies are in the @sap namespace and are available from the SAP NPM registry.

👉 First, relate the @sap namespace to the SAP NPM registry:

user@host:~
=> npm set @sap:registry=https://npm.sap.com

👉 Check that this setting is now saved in your configuration, with:

user@host:~
=> npm config ls

You should see output similar to this:

; cli configs
metrics-registry = "https://registry.npmjs.org/"
scope = ""
user-agent = "npm/6.4.1 node/v10.15.3 linux x64"

; userconfig /user/.npmrc
@sap:registry = "https://npm.sap.com"

; node bin location = /user/.nvm/versions/node/v10.15.3/bin/node
; cwd = /
; HOME = /user
; "npm config ls -l" to show all defaults.

👉 Next, explore the information about the @sap/cds package, including its dependencies, with:

user@host:~
=> npm info @sap/cds

This will show you that it has dependencies on other @sap namespaced packages, and also that there is a 'binary' (in other words an executable) called cds that's delivered as part of the package.

👉 Now, install the @sap/cds package globally:

user@host:~
=> npm install --global @sap/cds

This should eventually produce output similar to this:

/user/.nvm/versions/node/v10.15.3/bin/cds -> /user/.nvm/versions/node/v10.15.3/lib/node_modules/@sap/cds/bin/cds.js
+ @sap/[email protected]
added 38 packages from 75 contributors in 6.015s

Here you can see that the version of the @sap/cds package installed is 3.5.2. It may be that the version of @sap/cds that is installed when you do this exercise will be different (newer).

2. Install the CDS extension for VS Code

To efficiently and comfortably develop CAP based services with CDS, there is an extension for the VS Code IDE. This is available to download from the SAP Development Tools website.

Extensions can be installed directly in VS Code from the extension marketplace, or manually from a file. In this case the extension for CDS language support is available in the form of a file.

👉 Go to the Cloud section of the SAP Development Tools website and find the "CDS Language Support for Visual Studio Code" section. Follow the instructions there to download and subsequently install the extension.

When successfully installed, you should see the extension thus:

Summary

You've now installed the two key tools for developing with CAP locally, and are all set to create your first project.

Questions

1. What are the benefits of using NPM here?

2. What are the @sap namespaced packages upon which @sap/cds depends?

3. What is the significance of using the --global option when installing the @sap/cds package?

4. What is the meaning of the .vsix file type for the VS Code extension? Can we dig into that to see what's inside?