Hi,
I just started to get my feet wet in developing a web application using
jsf and seam and I wonder if there's a "nice" solution to my problem :-)
Setup:
JBoss AS 4.2.2.GA
Eclipse 3.3.1.1
Maven2 2.0.8 (also as Plugin in Eclipse)
Multi module project using a war-ear structure
Goal:
Webapplication using JSF, JBoss Seam, and Facelets on the view layer.
I have several years of experience in developing web applications using ColdFusion, PHP, HTML, and CSS and switched over to
Java one year ago. Back in the days when I was working with scripting languages I was used to do the regular "CTRL-S + F5" cycle about 15 times a minute. So changing something in the code and seeing the result was mostly a matter of 4 seconds or so...
Now, working in Eclipse and having setup the whole Maven2 project structure the time between saving a change and actually seeing the result in an web browser has increased to about 1 minute (I work on an older Laptop). Everytime I even change the slightest bit in one of my css and xhtml files I have to rebuild the whole application and redeploy it into my JBoss server. I've been looking around for a way to reduce the redeployment time but couldn't find a satisfying solution.
Things I've tried so far:
Creating the html and css files without any app server and if everything looks fine merging that code into my project structure. This doesn't really work if I want to use any of the JSF-Taglibs out there.Changing css (and xhtml) files directly in the tmp directory of my app server. In doing so I have to manually synchronize those files with my files in the project folders.Using the tips that Adam Warski proposes on his blog at http://www.warski.org/blog/. Even though this looks promising I still have to include code and config files in my project which are completely irrelevant to the project itself and are purely for development purposes. And if I want to make a release I beforehand have to remove those helper configs from my code.Yesterday I had a look at the JBoss Tools plugin set for Eclipse. I have to admit that I didn't completely understand what those plugins are actually doing but as far as I could see they're depending on some additional ant scripts in order to do somewhat of a hotdeployment which isn't quite fast either. Now I'm asking myself if there's really not a better solution than the ones I tried or if I'm just doing something completely wrong..
I would be very glad for any hints, ideas or directions;-) Thank you for your time!
Lorenz
[ January 23, 2008: Message edited by: Lorenz Fischer ]