[forge-dev] automatic dependency detection problem

Hi Lincoln, I understand absolutely, that you didn't want to open an _impl_. It is important to know, that it's not my fault, that it's not working. I do (not) think that your faces plugin is limited: No: I am really impressed by the power of the plugin, the integration of Metawidget is a great showcase! Yes: when trying to apply Forge to an existing persistence model I was confronted with some interesting questions :) After having applied the reverse engineer to my database, I found that the legacy primary keys were not picked up by the system. At first I thought, that some minor changes to the templates and the widgets would suffice, but then I realized, that the changes would be too much distributed all over the impl. The options I reviewed so far: - redesign the DB: not so bad, but more than one project use the entities - very bad - accept the (preferred) generation of "id" strings an remap the generated ID via JPA-annotations to the physical XXID Downside: a lot of legacy code (e.g. HQL statements) to refactor, very few tests :/ - use the PK-names from legacy persistence model so I can reuse legacy code a) when importing the legacy model, the scaffold will not use my PK, but render the PK as normal fields b) when changing only the templates and some widgets, the application will break between view and bean layer The beauty of Forge is the possibility to continuously use it to develop the application. In my case it would be kind of generate-repair-use-cycle (which is not so much fun) mainly because of the primary key handling. So I decided to investigate the situation in more detail and I think that I found a kinda viable solution by implementing some changes to the inspectors, widgets, templates .... I am sure you know what I mean, you did the really big part, isn't it :-) That's where I am now and I am really grateful for the insights I got into the inner workings of this bunch of brand new technology. So I decided to start a new plugin project based on the faces scaffold as close as possible, being able to follow your development without interrupting your progress. I don't know if and when I can spend enough time to get it working. In short: after having analyzed the problem I think that the primary key handling is to be fixed. Forge is a great tool and I think it's worth spending some time on this. I have started to do so, and I would be very grateful if you could take the time and have a look at it - when it works :-) Any remarks, hints appreciated, Thomas