[roncordell]

It would be ideal (for me) if it were possible to link to jars elsewhere in my CVS repository/local file system instead of having to copy them into the WEB-INF/lib directory. I know that I could do this outside of MyEclipse on a real OS, but since I have to use Windows here at the office, I can’t.

[Riyad Kalla]

1) Select your WEB-INF/lib directory
2) Right click, new File
3) Click the “Advanced” button, check “Link to file in the filesystem”

Does this provide the functionality you wanted?

[emmanuel]

Hello Riyad,

Unfortunately suggested feature does not work. Here is a quote from Eclipse help;

“Linked resources are files and folders that are stored in locations in the file system outside of the project’s location. These special resources must have a project as their parent resource.”.

Thus, it is not possible to place these (external jars) in the WEB-INF/lib directory. 😐

Two other items exist which seem to be duplicates of this feature request.
– Dependent projects / libraries – when available? (Enhancement Roadmap)
– External jars (Bug Reports and Fixes)

I’m following this feature closely; it seems to be planned for end Jan’2004.

Please advise.

Kind regards
Emmanuel

[No Operation]

I dont understand that issue, since I already use JARs and dependant project, and JSP editing works fine. Maybe this is an deployment issue?

regarding file system links

but since I have to use Windows here at the office

NTFS supports file system links under windows:

fsutil hardlink create NewFileName ExistingFileName

NOP

[Riyad Kalla]

NOP thank you for the information.

roncordell, is your issue merely linking an external JAR into your lib dir. If so, does NOP’s suggestion work?

emmanuel, project deployment improvements are at the top of our list (you can’t imagine how many people ask for this), but it won’t be in 2.7 GA. However, I do appreciate you taking the time to list the other features that this is similar to, so we can draw clear distinctions between these requests.

I’ll forward this on to Scott as an informative post, but also so he can get back to you with more detail on the feature.

[roncordell]

I will attempt the NTFS linking mechanism. However, Emmanuel’s response is exactly what I had in mind. I’d like to be able to link in external 3rd party jars into the /lib directory and have them deployed. This avoids having to have many copies of the same jar in many projects.

[Riyad Kalla]

Duley noted, we will work on improving this for you.

[No Operation]

This avoids having to have many copies of the same jar in many projects.

If you really wanna use the identical jar in many projects, why dont you add a resource project to eclipse which contains that jar?

In my project, every project contains its jars. So there are no interferences with fancy jar updates.

NOP

[Ivar Vasara]

@nop wrote:

regarding file system links
NTFS supports file system links under windows:

fsutil hardlink create NewFileName ExistingFileName

hmm. for some reason fsutils wouldn’t let me create a link to a directory.. but as a result I researched windows symlinks and found junction – http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/source/misc.shtml#junction a tool that works quite well and solves my problems 🙂

[Riyad Kalla]

Ahh glad to hear it!

Thank you for following up here incase other people need help with this type of functionality (as a workaround)

[Scott Anderson]

Nice thread all! Thanks for the feedback, usage cases, and workarounds.

[Author]

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