[seam-dev] Need advice on what and how to commit new build stuff for the booking sample app on WebSphere v7

[Dan Allen]

On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 10:02 AM, Max Rydahl Andersen <
max.andersen at redhat.com> wrote:

>
>     What I don't understand--and please bear with my naivety about Eclipse
>> plugin development--is why we can't offer some sort of "smart" editor that
>> is aware of the properties defined in the pom.xml file and can resolve them
>> when it needs a value (such as the JTA data source name).
>>
>>  That is what I would like to do where we can - but will only work for our
>> editors and projects. We don't control all of the IDE - sorry ;)
>> Anyway, the editor is just *one* part of this - then there is the whole
>> set of framework specific models in place, i.e. JSF and JPA provided by WTP
>> has their own little model which
>> expects things to be in a specific place and is not in any way extendable
>> in this area (afaik).
>>
>> btw. jta datasource name is an example of something we don't really need
>> to resolve since it only exists at runtime....
>> what we want to control is that when you want to do Hibernate queries from
>> the IDE you use a persistence.xml that is configured to run in J2SE;
>> but when deploying it should use the datasource name one - and this is not
>> controllable with a mere property replacement because of how
>> persistence.xml's are structured.
>>
>
> We'll need to discuss this in real time to make sound progress, likely
> JBossWorld. But I'll leave one statement/inquiry here.
>
> So you are saying that Eclipse basically has no native support for property
> substitutions of any kind in project files? I just don't see how the Eclipse
> developers missed this absolutely critical requirement for an IDE. For as
> long as anyone has been developing Java EE web applications, system
> administrators have been using all sorts of voodoo magic property
> replacement to get any deployable build artifact. Variations are just a huge
> fact of life. The IDE has to be able to deal with that reality and stop
> living in it's own ideal world that every value in a file is concrete.
>
> I'm saying *all* IDE's I know does not have property replacements support -
> not even intellij. If they have I missed it and would really like to get
> pointed to an example/docs anything.
>
> Please note there are two problems here: property replacement/understanding
> in editor/model and editors not being too much dependent on location of the
> file.
>
>  Putting my problem solving hat back on, the best way I have found to deal
> with this situation, from many years of having to get the IDE to operate in
> the real world, is to have an environment switcher. It tears through the
> project and replaces configuration files intended for one app server with
> configuration files for another. Then, you can edit them...but of course
> when you are all done tweaking them (with permanent changes), you have to
> copy the files back to their source to check them in. Otherwise, the changes
> are just temporary for your immediate development needs.
>
> yes, that is what I've been doing too - or simply not depend on the IDE :)
>
> anyway, having such a environment switcher is "more or less" what the maven
> profile support does (except the destionation is always in the build result,
> anyone know if that can be changed/customzied?).
> What would be nice is to (for those locations where it is possible) to do
> the "inverse operation" by simply comparing the src and destination and just
> do an intelligent merge ;)
>
>  Am I missing some obvious way to work? Put Maven completely aside for a
> moment and just focus on how to deal with different settings for different
> environment in any Java EE project. How is the problem solved? That is where
> we need to start when we discuss a solution.
>
> The problem is unfortunately normally solved with what I normally refer to
> as Ant voodoo ;)
>
> but yes, this is something better done face-2-face since its solution very
> much depend on what kind of 'property replacement' and what type of file you
> do it on.
>

Great, I'll star this e-mail and we can use it as an agenda for a
conversation at JBoss World.

I do have a rough idea of how to solve this. Obviously, and IDE has to work
with a concrete file. That's a fixture for the time being. What I think we
can do in JBoss Tools is offer an environment manager.

The environment manager is aware of source files with replacement properties
and the cooresponding real file locations (such as META-INF/persistence.xml
or WEB-INF/web.xml). When you select your profile, JBoss Tools runs the
property replacements (perhaps using Maven 2) and sets the resolved files
into their expected location (in the source tree).

When you make a change to a source file hooked into this manager, JBoss
Tools should be able to keep track that you have made a change and offer to
update the source file accordingly (or the Maven 2 properties definition for
that environment).

It may sound a little complicated, but this would be a great feature. There
is no voodoo magic.

-Dan

-- 
Dan Allen
Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat | Author of Seam in Action
Registered Linux User #231597

http://mojavelinux.com
http://mojavelinux.com/seaminaction
http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Dan
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