How to set system property?

Question

I am trying to follow this instruction for running gate embedded.

It says: "System property gate.home should be set to the gate installation directory." (http://gate.ac.uk/wiki/code-repository/)

How do I do this?

Also when I try to run the example code of EmbeddedAnnie I get the following error: ( I don't know if it is related or not ).

Initialising GATE... GATE home system property ("gate.home") not set. Attempting to guess... Using "C:\Program Files (x86)\GATE-6.0" as GATE Home. If this is not correct please set it manually using the -Dgate.home option in yo ur start-up script Using C:\Program Files (x86)\GATE-6.0 as GATE home Using C:\Program Files (x86)\GATE-6.0\plugins as installed plug-ins directory. Using C:\Program Files (x86)\GATE-6.0\gate.xml as site configuration file. Using C:\Users\UNST\gate.xml as user configuration file Using C:\Users\UNST\gate.session as user session file Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: gate/creole/gazetteer /AbstractGazetteer         at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:632)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:616)         at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:14 1)         at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283)         at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58)         at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197)         at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)         at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)         at sun.misc.Launcher$ExtClassLoader.findClass(Launcher.java:229)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:296)         at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:296)         at gate.util.GateClassLoader.loadClass(GateClassLoader.java:63)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)         at gate.creole.CreoleAnnotationHandler.processAnnotationsForResource(Cre oleAnnotationHandler.java:193)         at gate.creole.CreoleAnnotationHandler.processAnnotations(CreoleAnnotati onHandler.java:169)         at gate.creole.CreoleAnnotationHandler.processAnnotations(CreoleAnnotati onHandler.java:173)         at gate.creole.CreoleAnnotationHandler.processAnnotations(CreoleAnnotati onHandler.java:173)         at gate.creole.CreoleAnnotationHandler.processAnnotations(CreoleAnnotati onHandler.java:157)         at gate.creole.CreoleRegisterImpl.processFullCreoleXmlTree(CreoleRegiste rImpl.java:358)         at gate.creole.CreoleRegisterImpl.parseDirectory(CreoleRegisterImpl.java :341)         at gate.creole.CreoleRegisterImpl.registerDirectories(CreoleRegisterImpl .java:306)         at gate.Gate.initCreoleRepositories(Gate.java:449)         at gate.Gate.init(Gate.java:230)         at StandAloneAnnie.main(StandAloneAnnie.java:69) Caused by: java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: gate.creole.gazetteer.AbstractGazet teer         at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)         at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)         at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)         at sun.misc.Launcher$ExtClassLoader.findClass(Launcher.java:229)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:307)         at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:248)         ... 27 more 

Answer 1

You can do this via a couple ways.

One is when you run your application, you can pass it a flag.

java -Dgate.home="http://gate.ac.uk/wiki/code-repository" your_application

Or set it programmatically in code before the piece of code that needs this property set. Java keeps a Properties object for System wide configuration.

Properties props = System.getProperties(); props.setProperty("gate.home", "http://gate.ac.uk/wiki/code-repository");