[weld-dev] @Alternative VS multiproject

One promise of @Alternative beans is to make it easier to mock out things during testing. In practice there are some problems to make that a reality. For example, suppose we have this: - foo-database-layer.jar -- org/.../ProductionDatabaseSetup.class --- Description: connects to the database on localhost (which is only there on production). -- org/.../TestDatabaseSetup.class --- @Alternative --- extends ProductionDatabaseSetup --- Description: connects to an in-memory database and inserts testdata in it. - CustomerDAO -- @Inject DatabaseSetup databaseSetup; -- META-INF/beans.xml --- Filled with other stuff - foo-server.war -- WEB-INF/lib/foo-database-layer.jar -- WEB-INF/beans.xml --- Filled with other stuff Now, during the integrations tests of foo-server.war, we want to replace ProductionDatabaseSetup with TestDatabaseSetup. How? 1) Add a WEB-INF/beans-test.xml (just like logback-test.xml and logback.xml) => Does not work. It's ignored. 2) Change WEB-INF/beans.xml for the tests only. Duplicate everything from the original. Add declaration: <alternative>...TestDatabaseSetup</alternative> => Does not work. CustomerDAO still gets ProductionDatabaseSetup instead of TestDatabaseSetup. 3) Change WEB-INF/lib/foo-database-layer.jar!META-INF/beans.xml for the tests only. Duplicate everything from the original. Add declaration: <alternative>...TestDatabaseSetup</alternative> => Lots of code and tests are slow because of all the zipping and unzipping. -- With kind regards, Geoffrey De Smet