I am working on a project that will use code from a number of open-source Java projects. I plan to use Eclipse with the Sysdeo plugin for Tomcat. I also hope to use Eclipse's built-in CVS client (which is pretty swell, if you ask me) to keep track of how my code differs from the main development branch.
When you check-out a CVS project in Eclipse it copies the directory structure of the repository. In most cases this will be lots of different directories for all the different bits of the application -- JSPs here, Java source there, xml configuration files in yet another directory. There is an ANT build file that compiles and copies and assembles your web application (often as a WAR file)... somewhere else. This WAR file has a simpler internal structure so Tomcat can digest it.
The Sysdeo Tomcat plugin, on the other hand, expects your project to contain a Tomcat web application directory (an unJARred WAR file) -- with a WEB-INF subdirectory for classes, libraries, and the web.xml file -- and pretty much everything else (JSPs, HTML, etc.) at the project root. It updates the server.xml file in Tomcat to include your project directory as a web application context directory. It lets you run and debug your servlets and JSPs by starting, stopping, restarting (and otherwise fiddling with) Tomcat in Eclipse's debugging context but it doesn't "deploy" your application -- it just tells Tomcat where it is.
So I need two different directory structures for the project: one is needed by the CVS client to understand the relationship between my local code and the CVS repository; the other is needed for Tomcat to understand the application. There is an ANT file that builds one from the other. I could make two projects (one pre- and the other post- ANT) but that would give me two copies of things. This would obscure the linkage between the code I am debugging and the CVS repository version. I could make a project that has both directory structures (telling CVS to ignore the stuff that is there for Tomcat and hoping Tomcat will ignore the stuff that is there for CVS) but to make that work right would require the use of symbolic links for things that needed to be two places (and how ugly is that?)
...or I could post to the JUG list and see if anyone has a simpler solution to the problem.
Lee Haslup [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________ Juglist mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://trijug.org/mailman/listinfo/juglist_trijug.org
