Before you get too far along, I highly recommend following some best practices in working with Hop on your laptop. Doing this now will save you time and effort later on.
Refer to this Hop page, which describes Projects, Variables and Environments in more detail:
https://hop.apache.org/manual/latest/plugins/projects/projects.html
There are 4 folders that we want to make sure are placed OUTSIDE of the Hop binaries folder. This will make it easier for us adopt new versions of Apache Hop.
__Create these 4 folders
> create folders outside of your Hop binaries for these 4 items: audit, config, environments, projects. No spaces. Keep the path short and sweet.
__Set environment variables
> create system variable for HOP_AUDIT_FOLDER that matches your folder path
> create system variable for HOP_CONFIG_FOLDER that matches your folder path
__Config folder
> copy the hop-config.json from original location at C:\sam\hop\hop-binaries-1.0\config into the new “config” folder at c:\sam\hop\config
__Projects folder
> copy the 2 projects from original location at C:\sam\hop\hop-binaries-1.0\config\projects to new location at c:\sam\hop\projects
> Set your “standard projects folder”. Go Tools > Options
> fill in the “GUI… standard projects folder” item with the path of your projects folder
> Check your Project dropdown. It should at least show:
> If you have samples, default (and any other projects you created), then you are all set. If any projects are missing, you can re-add them by clicking “P+” and filling out the Project Properties box that pops up.
> When prompted about run configs and environment you can select NO and deal with them later.
__Environments folder
> Set your environments folder. Go Tools > Edit config variables
> Click on a new line and enter “HOP_ENVIRONMENTS_FOLDER” and enter the path of your environments folder
__Reward yourself
Pat yourself on the back and give yourself a bubble bath for following some recommended best practices. These steps should make life easier, especially as you start using source control and moving towards production.
