TICS Client Installation

To run the TICS client, the following tools/environments must be available on a client machine:

• Local build environment.
• Local SCM tool installation.
• TICS client setup program.

1. Make sure you have administrator rights.
2. Run the TICS installer program. The installer has the following name: ticssetup-<version>.exe. In case any options are set in a setup .ini file, the installer will not ask for those options. E.g., the location of the TICS server. It is important to run the installer from its original location since it may depend on any present setup .ini file.
3. Optionally, manually install one or more of the following TICS plugins for your IDE(s).
   • Eclipse
   • IntelliJ
   • Visual Studio
   • Visual Studio Code
   • Visual Slickedit
   • Tasking

Using File Server caching

By default, the TICS framework is installed as a client/server application, where the executables, configuration and third party code checkers and rule files are installed on the File Server. The client only contains the add-ins for the various IDEs and a thin application wrapper that starts the client executable from its location on the server.

It is also possible to cache the contents of the File Server locally. This may be useful in scenarios where the connection to the File Server is slow.

Prerequisites

Enabling caching is generally not recommended, since it places additional restrictions on the contents of the File Server. This includes the following prerequisites:

• The configuration should be completely independent from other directories, including INCDIRS or relative paths that are outside of the configuration directory
• Binaries should never be upgraded individually, both within the bin and chk folders
• The entire installation (including configuration, checkers, etc.) should have been optimized for deployment using caching, including upgrading checkers that do not include info.json, removing checkers that are not necessary for the configuration that should be cached and removing unnecessary files (such as backups of the configuration within the same folder, etc.)

Enabling caching

In order to enable File Server caching, the TICSCACHE environment variable can be set to the caching strategy. Accepted values are NONE, SIMPLE and ZIP. Alternatively, the file wrapper.properties can be used next to the TICS wrapper. In this file, the caching strategy can be set per application.

An example of the contents of wrapper.properties:

cache.TICS = zip
cache.TICSQServer = none
cache.TICSMaintenance = none

Caching strategies

The following caching strategies are available:

• NONE: the default strategy, which completely disables caching
• SIMPLE: a strategy where all files are copied one-by-one without compression
• ZIP: a strategy where zip files are used to speed up the transfer of checkers

The zip strategy will be faster if checkers that include info.json are used and each directory containing a checker is accompanied by a zip file with the same contents.

For example, if the checker "Roslyn" is used, a zip file containing this directory should be placed next to it in the chk directory. The command TICSMaintenance -zipchk can be used to do this automatically.

Manipulating cache

It may be desirable to show or remove the local cache. This can be done by invoking the wrapper with the -wrapper flag.

In the examples below, we use the TICS command, but any TICS application (TICSQServer, TICSMaintenance, etc.) can be used to accomplish the same thing.

Showing local caches

The command TICS -wrapper -showcache can be used to show the cache that is available on the client. The output looks as follows:

DIRECTORY                                    CONTENTS      PART OF CONFIGURATION
f7c07954062d90832043efe806884775             lib           yes                  
346be58b99602d0005fdb522ad758dc6             bin           yes                  
0daa2869d4fa142520f7ea99f1b865ae             cfg           yes                  
9c766c48a0264cb6e5e9353135d6382c             rules         yes                  
1cc655ffc7de021b3a20d677dbf21cd9             chk           yes    

The last column indicates whether the directory is part of the current configuration. If TICS has been used for multiple configurations, this may result in directories that are not part of the current configuration.

Removing caches

In order to remove the local cache, the following commands can be used:

• TICS -wrapper -clearconfigurationcache, which deletes the cache for the currently active configuration
• TICS -wrapper -clearallcaches, which deletes the caches for all configurations

The difference between caches that are part of the configuration and caches that aren't can be seen through the command TICS -wrapper -showcache.