Prepare Your Development Environment for CAP

To earn your badge for the whole mission, you will need to mark all steps in a tutorial as done, including any optional ones that you may have skipped because they are not relevant for you.

This tutorial contains all the installation steps that you would have to do to get started. It’s likely that you have some of the software already installed, so you can just skip those steps.

You can choose the editor to develop your CAP application. If you want to exactly go along with the following tutorials, we recommend using VS Code as an editor.

This tutorial contains a number of command line snippets that need to be pasted into a command line window (sometimes referred to as command line interface (CLI) or terminal). All snippets listed for macOS/Linux or without platform information can be executed in bash or zsh, which are the default command line interfaces (CLIs) for these platforms. The Windows snippets are for the Windows Command Prompt and not for the PowerShell. We suggest that Windows users use Git BASH instead, which is part of the Git for Windows installation and contains the bash CLI and other basic UNIX command line tools. In the Git BASH, use the macOS/Linux snippets of the tutorial. VS Code supports the use of the Git BASH for its integrated terminal (see Terminal Basics for more details) as well.

Git is the version control system that you need to download the files of this tutorial but also to develop anything in collaboration with others.

1. To check whether you already have Git installed, open a command line window and execute the following command:

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   git version
   

   You should get an output like:

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   git version 2.x.x
   

2. If not, go to Git downloads, pick the installer appropriate for your operating system, and install it.

3. Check again whether you have Git installed.

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   git version
   

Node.js is the JavaScript runtime that the CAP backend part of the application runs on. It is also needed for some of the tools involved to develop the application.

Make sure you run the latest long-term support (LTS) version of Node.js with an even number like 18. Refrain from using odd versions, for which some modules with native parts will have no support and, thus, might even fail to install.

1. To check whether you have the right version (^18) of Node.js, open a command line window and execute the following command:

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   node -v
   

   You should get an output like:

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   v18.x.x
   

2. If you don’t have the required version, go to Node.js download page and download the installer appropriate for your operating system.

3. Follow the default settings in the Node.js Setup Wizard, check the box for automatically installing the necessary tools at the last step, and install.

In case of problems, see the Troubleshooting guide for CAP for more details.

1. Restart your CLI and check again whether you have the right version (^18) of Node.js.
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   node -v
   

1. Check in a command line window whether you already have the UI5 CLI installed.

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   ui5 --version
   

2. If you don’t get a version number, install the UI5 CLI.

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   npm install --global @ui5/cli
   

3. Verify that the installation was successful by running the version command again.

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   ui5 --version
   

See SAPUI5 CLI for more details.

CAP provides you with all the tools to create your data model with entities and your services. It helps you tremendously to get these services running locally during development with an incredible speed. It also creates the connection to both local databases and databases in the cloud (SAP HANA). It comes with different tooling that is used in this tutorial. You can see the details in the CAP documentation.

1. Install CDS development kit globally in a command line window.

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   npm install --global @sap/cds-dk
   

   This process takes some minutes installing the cds command that you will use in the next steps.

   If there’s an older @sap/cds package already installed on your machine, you have to remove it first. You’ll be instructed to do so. If you run into problems, see the Troubleshooting guide in the CAP documentation for more details.

2. To verify that the installation was successful, run cds without arguments.

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   cds
   

   This lists the available cds commands.

3. Check what versions of the CDS libraries have been installed.

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   cds --version
   

   To quickly find out what is the latest version of the CAP tooling, see the Changelog page of the CAP documentation.

You need to install the SAP Language Support extensions for VS Code:

1. Open VS Code.

2. Choose the Extensions icon in the left pane.

   

3. Type SAP CDS in the search field and choose SAP CDS Language Support from the search results.

   

4. Choose Install.

5. Restart VS Code after the installation.

Now, the extension is installed in VS Code. If the extension is already installed and enabled in VS Code, it is updated automatically. The VS Code extension comes with a welcome page, which shows latest release notes of CAP. It starts automatically whenever an update arrives for the extension. Later, you can open the page through the Command Palette in VS Code CDS: Show CAP Release Notes.

Learn more about SAP CDS Language Support Extension:

• short demo
• features and commands

SAP Fiori tools are a number of extensions for VS Code. They mainly support you in developing SAP Fiori elements apps. In this tutorial, you use the so-called SAP Fiori application generator to create an SAP Fiori elements app, you need this for the tutorial Create an SAP Fiori Elements-Based UI.

Additional Documentation:

SAP Fiori Tools

For macOS you need to install the code command in PATH as described in the previous step on how to Install VS Code.

You need to install the SAP Fiori tools - Extension Pack extensions for VS Code:

1. Open VS Code.

2. Choose the Extensions icon in the left pane.

   

3. Type SAP Fiori tools in the search field and choose SAP Fiori tools - Extension Pack from the search results.

   

4. Choose Install.

5. Restart VS Code after the installation.

After a restart of VS Code, you can check for the tools by invoking View → Extensions and then scrolling through the list of Enabled extensions. They all start with SAP Fiori tools. If the extension is already installed and enabled in VS Code, it’s updated automatically.

Yeoman is a tool for scaffolding web apps. You’ll need it if you want to carry out the tutorial Prepare SAP Build Work Zone, Standard Edition Setup.

1. Check in a terminal whether you already have Yeoman installed:

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   yo --version
   

2. If you don’t get a version number, install Yeoman:

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   npm install --global yo
   

If a tutorial has prerequisites, they’re listed at the beginning of the tutorial.

For the tutorial, you need one tutorial root directory that holds both the directory to develop the app (cpapp) and the tutorial directory (tutorial) that lets you access the template files. See the table below:

You only need to create the tutorial root directory manually and the tutorial and cpapp directories will be created automatically when you run the commands in the next steps of the tutorial.

Here’s an example how this will look in your file explorer:

Downloading the tutorial gives you easy access to template files that are required for some tutorials.

1. Open a command line window.

2. Navigate to the previously decided tutorial root directory.

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   cd <tutorial root directory>
   

3. Clone the tutorial.

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   git clone https://github.com/SAP-samples/cloud-cap-risk-management tutorial
   

Go to your tutorial root directory. You should see there the newly created tutorial directory that also includes the template files under tutorial/templates.

Note that this step is optional. You have to execute it only if you’re planning to continue with the CI/CD tutorial after you complete the current mission. If this is not the case, you can skip this step altogether. Just make sure you mark it as completed, so you can earn your badge for completing the mission.

To be able to perform the steps for CI/CD, you will need a public repository. Currently, SAP Continuous Integration and Delivery supports GitHub and Bitbucket repositories.

We recommend creating a public GitHub repository to save your tutorial application because this is what the tutorial uses. This way, if you have issues with your tutorial application, you can refer to it.

For real application development, you need to consider the right place for your repository, of course.

Go to GitHub and create a new GitHub repository.

Info about branches

For the sake of simplicity, don’t create additional branches in your repository. When initially created, your repository has only one branch - the main branch. This is the only branch you need to complete the tutorial.

Note that this step is optional. You have to execute it only if you’re planning to continue with the CI/CD tutorial after you complete the current mission. If this is not the case, you can skip this step altogether. Just make sure you mark it as completed, so you can earn your badge for completing the mission.

1. Copy the repository’s URL you have created before.

2. Open a command line window.

3. Navigate to the tutorial root directory.

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   cd <tutorial root directory>
   

4. Clone your new repository.

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   git clone <git-repository-url> cpapp
   

   Replace <git-repository-url> with your GitHub repository’s URL.

Note that this step is optional. You have to execute it only if you’re looking to start from a more advanced stage in the mission. If this is not the case and you’re starting from scratch, you can skip this step altogether. Just make sure you mark it as completed, so you can earn your badge for completing the mission.

To earn your badge for the whole mission, you will need to mark all steps in a tutorial as done, including any optional ones that you may have skipped because they are not relevant for you.

If you don’t want to start from scratch, but from a specific example of the tutorial, you can copy the required files in your project. Alternatively, you can fork the project and work on the fork.

The name of the prerequisite branch is given on the top of each tutorial that requires code changes.

1. Look-up the branch in the tutorial.

2. Open a command line window.

3. Navigate to the tutorial root directory.

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   cd <tutorial root directory>
   

4. Check out the example’s branch.

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   cd tutorial
   git checkout <branch>
   

   Replace <branch> with the name of the branch of the example that you want to start with.

5. Copy all files from the example to a local directory <project-dir>, except the .git directory.

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   cp -r .gitignore $(ls -1A | grep -v .git) ../cpapp
   

   If you get an error, make sure you are not using PowerShell to execute the command. Checkout Step 2: Command Line Interpreters above to see the recommended command line interpreters for this tutorial.

6. Check out the master branch to get access to the template files again.

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   git checkout master
   

7. Switch to your app directory.

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   cd ../cpapp
   

8. Install required Node.js modules in your app directory.

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   npm install