SAP Hybrid Application Toolkit – Installation lessons

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Well, since OpenSAP keeps offering these courses, I figured I better keep learning better ways to do things.  The latest class is all about making mobile applications.  Of course this appeals to me due to my Field Service application, and many clients who need to do work offline.  So, the week zero of the class is all about getting things setup…  Holy *#$*.  Now, I had to leave this alone for a while, but the installation took me no less than about 10 hours of time.  And since I have an endless amount of things I want to do, and a limited amount of time, well, this kinda ticked me off.  The good news is that I will tell you how to get it done a whole lot faster.

Lesson 1: it won’t work on Windows 10, no matter how hard you try.  This may change in the future, but as of today, I finally made it work on windows 8, but windows 10 is not yet compatible.  This was a big thing that ticked me off.  According to the documentation, Windows 10 is supported, until you install about 8 other things, then attempt to install the HAT, then it tells you can’t install.  GRRRRRR!  I had to take an old laptop, downgrade it as far as I could, which was Windows 8 in order to make this work.

Lesson 2: visit https://help.hana.ondemand.com/webide_hat/frameset.htm  This will show you the available versions, and most importantly tell you what versions of things you need to look at.  Here’s an example for 1.14

Development Environment Dependency   Previous Requirement   Current Requirement

Node.js package manager                                   0.12.10                                    5.4.1
SMP Hybrid SDK                                                    SP10 PL04                            SP11
Cordova Environment                                         5.2.0                                         5.4.1

I’ll come back to these numbers later because I had to find a trick to complete the installation.

Lesson 3: the documentation provided by the class is out of date.  So all the versions they show to you to use no longer apply.  While the document is good, the versions are from 2015.  here’s the link:
https://open.sap.com/files/5e5ec32f-f743-4c6a-8842-8ab4af467ab7
I’m guessing you will need to register for the class to get it, but it’s free, so go for it.
The first place you need to deviate is in the Cordova installation.  Don’t install a particular version (yet), just do npm install -g Cordova  and it will find the latest version and install this.
Next, pay close attention to the plugins for the  android studio.  You will need to select versions that are older in order to run the HAT.  For my version, I needed to install 5.1 (not the default 6.0) and for the build tools, I added 19.1, 20, 21.1.2, 22 & 23.  I’m not an android guru, so I may have more than I needed, but I got it work 🙂  Just make sure you grab all the extra stuff.
Finally, you can get to the Hybrid App Toolkit installation.

Lesson 4: installing the HAT is iterative.  If you followed all the right stuff, you should be able to get through steps 1 and 2 (as long as you have all the system parameters set, but the installation helps with those if you forgot any).  Step 3, go ahead and go as far as you can, but it’s going to fail.  the reason is that in order to get through step 1 of the installation, you need the latest version of Cordova.  To get through step 3, you need to go back to the “correct” version.  For me, it’s 5.4.1.  So, to fix this, you will need to go back to the command prompt and do the following:
npm uninstall -g cordova
npm cache clean
npm install -g cordova@5.4.1

once this finishes, you can restart the HAT installation, skip straight to step 3 (don’t re-execute step one, or it will fail due to the cordova version) and it will finally finish the installation.  Then you can proceed on to the rest of the document, which I’m finally beginning now.

Lesson 5:  in order to connect the Web IDE to the HAT, it must be running on the same machine (at least so far, but it appears that HAT is local:9010, so I can’t run the webIDE from my good laptop…  only the old windows 8 machine if I want to use the HAT).

anyway, I hope this saves you some time, thanks for reading,

As always, thanks for reading and don't forget to check out our SAP Service Management Products at my other company JaveLLin Solutions,
Mike

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