| Flexible Project Layout [message #81384] |
Tue, 08 March 2005 13:40 |
Eclipse User |
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I have been looking at the flexible project layout, trying to determine how
well if fits my needs. It looks to me like it allows me to accomplish what
I need to do, but does not make it easy.
My project team has a large project implementing a MVC framework. The
project is organized into modules, and each module contains both Java
classes and accompanying JSPs, javascript, and images. Currently, these
resources are nested together in the project source tree, but the jsps,
javascript, and images could be moved into the WebContent directory if
necessary. Both the web application web.xml file and other configuration
files contained in the WEB-INF directory contain server specific
configuration information such as file paths and debug settings. I am
trying to find a way to allow Web Tools to deploy and debug the jsp files in
my source tree without requiring the configuration files to be configured in
my source tree.
Does flexible project layout solve this problem? It looks to me like I
might be able to put the jsps in a separate directory, create a separate
project for the jsps, and make it a module of my main project. The solution
that seems more intuitive to me is to allow a J2EE project to contain
multiple WebContent directories, the way a Java project can contain multiple
java source folders. This would allow me to have a WebContent directory for
my configuration files outside of my source tree and a WebContent directory
inside my source tree for my jsp and image files -- all that would be
necessary is to merge the two together in build or deploy. Most of what our
project requires is met without flexible project layout. The only rub is
that the large number of jsps and other resources that live within the
WebContent directory requires that we use their location in our source tree
within our project. The changes to the configuration files in the WEB-INF
directory are fairly contained, but in order for the team to work well
together, it is very beneficial to be able to change them without having to
worry that those changes being in the source tree.
The other aspect that is of interest to my project team is being able to
store the jsps within the java source tree, the way we currently do.
Conceptually, this provides a convenient packaging for development work. In
reading over the Flexible Project Builder test plan, it looks like this
might almost be supported -- but not quite. If there was a way to define a
fileset within a directory tree, and then map those files into the deploy,
this might work well for our current source structure. For instance,
specifying that *.jsp in src/java maps to WebContent/WEB-INF/classes would
allow us to continue to build as we currently do. This seems like a
secondary concern, however. We could easily make some changes in our source
tree to meet the Web Tools requirements.
Any comments would be appreciated. Thanks in advance,
Nathan
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