TiCS Installation Guide

TiCS Client Installation

The TiCS client is an optional analyzer component of the TiCS framework that developers can use to check the quality of their code before committing (or pushing) it to the repository.

In order to start using TiCS client, you need to install the thin application wrapper on your machine. On each invocation, the wrapper queries the TiCS Viewer to determine which particular version of TiCS and which particular version of the wrapper (self updating) should be used. These versions will be downloaded to the local machine when not yet present. This means that the wrapper should normally not be updated if you want to start using a new version of TICS. However, in exceptional cases it might be needed to update the wrapper, because of changes or bug fixes that prevent the wrapper from updating itself.

Installation options

There are different ways to install the TiCS Client:

Via the User Settings
Using the TiCS Client installer
Using the IDE plugins

Authentication

All installation options depend on the TiCS Viewer. Access to the TiCS viewer might require authentication. Therefore it is needed to obtain an authentication token on beforehand. Please take the following steps to obtain a personal token:

Navigate to the TiCS Viewer and log in
Go to the User Settings page, accessible from the menu bar on the left.
Choose Authentication Tokens and click on Add Authentication Token
Optionally add a description and/or expiration date
Click on Download to download a file named tics_client.token
Place the downloaded file in %APPDATA%\TICS (Windows) or in ~/.tics (Linux)

Installation via User Settings

Navigate to the TiCS Viewer and log in
Go to the User Settings page, accessible from the menu bar on the left.
Choose Install TICS
Select the applicable Configuration and Platform
If you don't know what configuration to use, click (help me) behind the Configuration drop down menu and enter your project's name to detect which configuration to use
Click on Copy to clipboard
Open a Powershell terminal and paste the copied command
Press Enter to invoke the script and have TiCS installed

The TICS environment variable also contains the name of a TiCS Analyzer Configuration. If the location of the TiCS Viewer changes or you want to use a different configuration, you should change the value of the TICS environment variable.

Installation using TiCS Client installer

Please take the following steps to install the TiCS client (wrapper) on your development machine:

Obtain (the location) of the TiCS client setup program (and optionally an accompanying .ini file) from your system administrator or other TiCS representative.
The TiCS client (wrapper) and plugins are installed for the current user (admin privileges are not required)
Run the TiCS client setup program The client installer has the following name: ticssetup-client-<version>.exe

If you are not running with an .ini file, you have to provide:
- The destination folder where the TiCS client wrapper should be installed (default %APPDATA%\TICS\Wrapper)
- The location of the TiCS Analyzer Configuration, which is a URL provided to you by your TiCS representative. When the TICS environment variable is already set, then the TiCS Analyzer Configuration field is pre-filed with it
In case any options are set in a setup.ini file, such as the URL to the TiCS Analyzer Configuration on the TiCS Viewer, the installer will not ask for those options

The installer allows you to optionally install TiCS plugins for your IDE(s), which is described in more detal below
During the installation, the TiCS installer will set the TICS environment variable for you, which is an URL pointing at an API endpoint of the TiCS Viewer to which it will connect. If it cannot authenticate, you need to obtain a personal token from the viewer to be able to connect

It is important to run the installer from its original location since it may depend on any .ini file being present

Note that the client installer does no longer support the legacy TiCS deployment architecture which will soon be deprecated.

Plugin installation using TiCS Client installer

The installer allows you to optionally install TiCS plugins for your IDE(s), for example for Eclipse, Visual Studio, or IntelliJ. These will be automatically selected for installation when they can be found on your machine, but the installer allows you to deselect them if needed

Close all IDE's for which you want to install a TiCS plugin
When getting to the TICS Plugins dialog, select the plugins you want to install In this example Visual Studio Code
For some IDE's it is required to provide the IDE installation directory. Provide this directory if the TiCS client installer asks for it. For instance, Eclipse and Visual Studio Code are known to require this
Complete the installation
Start your IDE

If the IDE plugin does not appear to be working after installation, make sure the IDE is running with the required permissions to modify its own installation. Running the IDE as Administrator ensures the plugin will be loaded correctly.

Troubleshooting

When executing TICS, I get an error referring to "PKIX path"

These PKIX path errors come in various forms, such as PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target or
PKIX path validation failed: java.security.cert.CertPathValidatorException: signature check failed.

This happens when the TiCS Viewer is using an SSL certificate that is either self-signed or uses a root certificate that is not recognized by the default trust store. To resolve this please see here.

Advanced

Manipulating client-side cache

The TiCS framework downloads TiCS binaries, code checkers, configuration files to a local cache directory before using them. It may sometimes 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.

Configuring connection retry behavior

If the wrapper fails to query the viewer, it will retry the connection a limited number of times. The connection timeout before a request is aborted, number of connection retries, and the delay between consecutive connection attempts can be configured by providing properties in the wrapper.properties file or by setting environment variables:

Setting	Environment variable	Property	Default value
Number of connection retries	`TICSCONNECTIONRETRIES`	`connection_retries`	`10`
Delay between connection attempts (in seconds)	`TICSCONNECTIONRETRYDELAY`	`connection_retry_delay`	`60`
Connection timeout (in seconds)	`TICSCONNECTIONTIMEOUT`	`connection_timeout`	`300`