GWT project dependencies in Eclipse - managing class files in war.

[AndrewG]

I have quite a large project - developed in eclipse Ganymede - into
which I am incorporating gwt. I want to organise this as follows:

1) A 'low level' GWT component library (mostly containing custom
widgets).
2) A GWT library containing complex UI web pages (with test harness
facilities).
3) A big existing web application into which the pages from (2) will
be incorporated.

At the moment I can run/test using 'hosted mode' from within (2), but
not within (3) - for a number of reasons.

I want to develop widgets and pages using (1) and (2) above, test
these in hosted mode using (2) - then 'deploy' into (3), and finally
test in (3) in web mode using tomcat.

This more or less works - but is extremely slow. This problem arises
because - from what I have seen on-line - the preferred (only?) way to
deploy/reuse these gwt libraries is by 'jaring' them up - and this
cant be done automatically in eclipse as far as I know.

As a result, the gwt libraries are being manually re-jared and copied
around each time a relatively small change takes place - eg a small
widget change in (1) requires re-jarring and putting the jar into
(2)'s classpath, etc.

To get around this - I have tried to set things up so that I can run
the GWT compiler from within (2) and generate the 'test apps' in the
more normal eclipse/java way - ie referencing the dependee project
from within the dependant one, not the manually created jar. In the
final deployment step to (3) jars would be used.

This works fine until runtime of the test apps in (2) running hosted
mode. The gwt compile/build process runs on (2) ok - but then we get
runtime error due to missing class files - because the class files
from (1) are not being put into the 'war' for (2).

This looks like it should be a very simple thing to fix - but so far I
have not been able to find out how to control/organise what class
files are put into the gwt project war directory.

In a 'normal' dynamic web app - just using the 'Java EE Module
Dependencies' dialog normally sorts this out - but this dialog isn't
present - and none of the other 'fixes' that I would have thought
ought to work seem to have any effect.

I am sure that this kind of thing must be a reasonably common problem
in largish gwt projects - but havent been able to find an answer yet -
does anyone have any informed suggestions ?

Andrew

[Jason Parekh]

Hey Andrew,

There's an alternative to the JAR approach:  In your (3)'s project properties, set up (1) and (2) as linked source folders, and in (2)'s project properties, set up (1) as a linked source folder.  This is ugly, but it should work until we get proper support dependent projects in the plugin.

Please let us know if you run into any issues using this method.

jason