[ https://issues.jboss.org/browse/TOOLSDOC-345?page=com.atlassian.jira.plug... ] Michelle Murray commented on TOOLSDOC-345: ------------------------------------------ Wow! Thanks for writing such a detailed comment. I really appreciate it and certainly needed it as I was way off the mark and using the wrong names for things, which only lead to further confusion. Things are a lot clearer now: * You have an application server on your system. For example, EAP 6.0. * To use an application server with the IDE, you need to create at least one server runtime environment (abbrev. here to SRE). An SRE informs the IDE about the application server's local location, which config file and JRE to use. * You can have multiple SREs for one application server, each with config variations. For example, one SRE with EAP 6.0 & JDK 1.6 and then another SRE with EAP 6.0 & JDK 1.6. * Config of individual SREs is under Preferences > Servers > Runtime Environments, also accessible via new server wizard. * To deploy an app to an application server using a specific SRE, you need to create at least one server adapter (or 'server'). A server adapter informs the IDE of further config details that specify an application server's management, such as launching and publishing. * You can have multiple server adapters for one SRE, each with config variations. For example, two server adapters can use the same SRE, one for a local application server and one for a remote application server; or one server adapter in which publishing happens when changes are detected and the other only publishing with manual republish. * Config of individual server adapters is via the new server wizard or in the servers editor. I was finding it hard to know when to use 'server adapter' or 'server' as the IDE seems to use the latter for the former. For instance in the context menu of the servers tab, specifically New > Server. To me, this action creates a server adapter. So I have reconciled this in my head as follows: When you create a server adapter you are in essence creating a server; you specify the management settings that define a specific 'server instance' = you define a server of application server type x with config settings y to which apps can be deployed. *What do you think?* -- This message is automatically generated by JIRA. If you think it was sent incorrectly, please contact your JIRA administrators For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira