iDAI.field

The German Archaeological Institute’s (DAI) new take on a field research documentation system. Combining features of GIS, photo management, and database management systems in a unique and integrating manner, it aims at facilitating archaeological workflows by reducing the overhead of using multiple systems. Developed in-house by the DAI’s information technology department, it targets primarily the needs of the institute’s excavations, older ones as well as those to come. Yet, due to the nature of its adjustable data model and the fact it is open source software, any interested third party is free to reuse and adjust it to their needs.

Installation

You can install the latest version of iDAI.field by downloading it from the github releases page or the idai-field homepage. Choose the installer for your operating system (MacOS, Windows or Linux).

Development

Development of iDAI.field works under MacOS, Windows and Linux. In any case, before you start, make sure you have NodeJS > 12.0.0 as well as Node Package Manager (NPM) installed.

Then clone this repository locally and run the following commands:

$ npm install
$ npm start

npm install fetches the necessary dependencies, while npm start compiles the Angular app and starts it via Electron.

Shapefile import/export is handled by a Java command line tool which is called by the Electron app. If Java 8 or higher and Maven are installed, the Java tool can be built via the command:

$ npm run build:java

See also idai-components-2.

Tests

The app must have been built (npm run build:test) before running the tests.

To execute the unit tests, run

$ npm test   

The project is set up to manage the compilation of the sources (test as well as regular sources) independently from Angular. This is due to the fact that we perform Node based tests, since our code runs in an Electron context. This is done on the basis of test/tsconfig.json and jasmine. To rebuild the sources for tests continually, you can run npm run build:test+watch in one terminal window, and npm test in another.

For troubleshooting information see here.

To execute e2e tests, run

$ npm run e2e [noff|ff]

The optional fail fast parameter specifies if test execution stops on the first error (ff) or continues until all tests are finished (noff). If not specified, the default mode is noff.

Packaging

To create binaries run:

$ npm run build
$ npm run package:[mac|win|lnx]

Only packages for the selected target platform are created. When the command has finished execution, you find packages of the application in the release directory.

Please note that when using Windows, due to nested node_modules and the windows default maximum path length you might be running into errors while attempting to extract the package. In that case, please use a different archiver, for example 7-Zip.