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Hello myEclipse users / support team.
I will document in this thread my experiences with myEclipse, which i’ll use for a webproject.
The project will be tested locally and then deployed to a remote location ( Java-Hosting Provider).
The findings will be summarized in an article.
Your comments are always welcome.
Some preliminary information:
Hosting: low cost Java-Hosting provider (< 20$ / month)
Server: Tomcat (initially, may be changed)
Persistence: not yet decidedcu!
Eclipse Installation
The eclipse project released version 3.0 a few days before I start my project (and a few days earlier than sheduled, 2004-06-25).
I’ve installed eclipse 3.0 without problem.
MyEclipse Installation
The name “myEclipse” is a little confusing to me, as I think initially that the product is a complete distribution of eclipse. But after reading the site, the concept of “product extension” becomes more clear.
I choose the “manual installation” of MyEclipse, because i tend to keep all java related stuff in one movable folder and additionally I like the idea of knowing exactly what happens during installation process (don’t know what the installer modyfies, e.g. registry settings).
The document “MyEclipse 2.7 Manual Installation” suggest any location outside the eclipse base installation – but I dislike this, and thus I try to simply copy the “features” and “plugin” directories manually into the base installation. That workes fine.
Remark:
A sentence like “This approach significantly reduces the risk of corrupting your Eclipse base installation during the install process” does not increase my trust into the products (eclipse / MyEclipse).Suggestions for users:
Follow the “MyEclipse” suggested manual installation procedures or use the installer.Suggestions for MyEclipse:
Allow users to install within the eclipse directory, e.g. due to a link to a folder like eclipse/MyEclipse.Suggestions for eclipse:
– Similar to the “links” folder, implement an “extensions” or “extends” folder which can contain product extensions without the need of a “link-file” file.MyEclipse would be installed into eclipse/extends/myEclipse. The extensions folder is integrated but in the same time independent.
– Alternatively, allow product extensions to be placed directly into the “links” folder, without the need of a link-file ( eclipse/links/MyEclipse/ ).
[note: of course it is possible that “I have missed a point”, thus i derive faulty conclusions/suggestions]
I continue now with the MyEclipse Web examples
I follow this tuturial (using pause key to interupt the film and apply the steps to myeclipse):
http://www.myeclipseide.com/images/tutorials/webprojectdemo.htmThe tutorial is different from the one in the MyEclipse online help, which is a little confusing (e.g. don’t know which is the actual one).
=> MyEclipse should include tutorials based on eclipse cheat-sheets.
What are cheat-sheets?
=> eclipse should rename “cheat-sheets” to “show-sheets” / “Demo-Sheets” or something similar, which is more descriptive.
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I’ve started with the tuturial now and everything is fine, except small details:
Creating a new Java Class: tutorial has small inconsistency:
– Source Folder is “src”, in tutorial “JavaSource”Hello World class:
– method “helloWorld” missleading (confusion with contructor)
=> use “sayHello” or similar–
Project is up, class created, java server page created.
At this point i have to install Apache’s Tomcat Server locally to make my first tests. Installation is easy (unzipping a file), but the neccessarity to setup System-Variables is annoying (CAROLINA_HOME, JAVA_HOME).
I start the server manually via “J:/tomcat/bin/startup.bat”, and I have ‘contact’ at “http://localhost:8080”.
[btw: I use currently Win XP (preparing slowly to move to Linux) and try to keep all java stuff on drive-letter “J:”]
Following further the MyEclipse tutorial, I configure MyEclipse to recognise Tomcat5 and deploy to tomcat5. My first Java Web application runs fine at “http://localhost:8080/HelloWorld/helloWorld.jsp”.
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Using “J:/tomcat/bin/shutdown.bat” manually, i terminate tomcat5.
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Now a problem:
I cannot start Tomcat5 within MyEclipse, as suggested in the tutorial:
“java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/catalina/startup/Bootstrap
Exception in thread “main” ”MyEclipse support, please help me out!
]After configuring Tomcat within MyEclipse again, Starting Tomcat within myEclipse runs fine [I don’t know what the problem was].
I play with the debugger, as suggested by the tutorial. Have only minimum problems, e.g. finding the “External Preview” view (used finally the webbrowser).
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At this point i like to deploy the project to my Java Hosting Provider, but I have no idea how to setup this.
Additionally it looks like MyEclipse does not provide me with the ability to deploy to my local tomcat and at the same to to a remote tomcat installation.
I would expect a list of “locations”, which have an property “Application Server”.
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So, two questions raise here:
a) how do I deploy to a remote tomcat, which is located at my java-hosting-provider?
b) how do I setup 2 (ore more) locations, all uusing tomcat – thus I can easily switch between local deploy/debug and remote deploy/debug?
a) The deployment tool provided in ME is for use as a development tool. For production deployments we encourage our users to write their own Ant scripts that to build/deploy their projects on their own. If you *really* want to use our deployment tool, you are free to setup a “packaged deployment” which will create a WAR file for you, so you can upload that file to your provider. We don’t provide any ‘remote deployment’.
b) You currently cannot do this, its a popular open enhancement that we will address in a later release.
b2) Remote debugging is a different topic and is covered in the FAQ here: http://www.myeclipseide.com/FAQ+index-myfaq-yes-id_cat-22.html#166
” MyEclipse rich set of integrated application server connectors when combined with the innovative Synch-on-Demand deployment technologies has the power to greatly improve developers’ productivity.”
source: http://www.myeclipseide.com/ContentExpress-display-ceid-40.htmlBased on the above statement, I expected a simple setup of a simple standard case (a tomcat installation at an hosting provider).
My productivity is against zero – I am demotivated.
a) The deployment tool provided in ME is for use as a development tool. For production deployments we encourage our users to write their own Ant scripts that to build/deploy their projects on their own. If you *really* want to use our deployment tool, you are free to setup a “packaged deployment” which will create a WAR file for you, so you can upload that file to your provider. We don’t provide any ‘remote deployment’.
I don’t like to create manually “Ant scripts”, WAR files and similar things.
The tool (MyEclipse) should encapsulate the domain knowledge (Deployment to Remote Server) and provide me with a simple configuration for this very simple standard case.
Can the support provide me with a small list of the necessary steps to publish the “HelloWorld Demo” to my hosting providers (remote) tomcat?
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b) You currently cannot do this, its a popular open enhancement that we will address in a later release.
This should have highest priority.
Where are those enhancements tracked?
Is there an list available?b2) Remote debugging is a different topic and is covered in the FAQ here:
will come back later to this.
Can the support provide me with a small list of the necessary steps to publish the “HelloWorld Demo” to my hosting providers (remote) tomcat?
Sure. Deploy to your local development instance of Tomcat as a packaged archive. Test it, then copy (via ftp, scp, ssh or whatever) the archive to the Tomcat instance at your hosting provider.
Again, our first priority is in helping developers quickly build and test applications. We’re not, and don’t intend to be, a production deployment tool. However, if you have another development tools that solves this remote hosting deployment issue the way you like, please let us know as we can use that as more information for any type of remote deployment enhancement request.
Sure. Deploy to your local development instance of Tomcat as a packaged archive.
This means i have to switch in the preferences between “packaged” and “non-packaged” (which I use during developement).
The is not convenient.
Test it, then copy (via ftp, scp, ssh or whatever) the archive to the Tomcat instance at your hosting provider.
I would like a more detailed description, describing how I could do this within myEclipse/eclipse.
Again, our first priority is in helping developers quickly build and test applications. We’re not, and don’t intend to be, a production deployment tool.
I don’t understand your distinction “build / test” – “deploy”. Deployment to a remote location (via ftp, scp, ssh or ‘whatever’) belongs to the defined MyEclipse functionality.
I am currently loosing worthfull time, for simply bringing up a “HelloWorld” application to a remotely located tomcat installation (nothing special).
What will happen when I switch to full fledged J2EE / Application servers etc.?
However, if you have another development tools that solves this remote hosting deployment issue the way you like, please let us know as we can use that as more information for any type of remote deployment enhancement request.
There is not much to showcase. Instead of defining a tomcat on the local filesystem, I like to have the possibility to define a remote tomcat (or a least: using myEclipse or eclipse functionality to publis the application).
[please never feel attacked by my writing style. I evaluate in the role of a real demanding user]
I don’t understand your distinction “build / test” – “deploy”. Deployment to a remote location (via ftp, scp, ssh or ‘whatever’) belongs to the defined MyEclipse functionality.
…
Instead of defining a tomcat on the local filesystem, I like to have the possibility to define a remote tomcat (or a least: using myEclipse or eclipse functionality to publis the application).Our focus has always been about helping developers with their core implementation issues, not production app deployment. For us the issue you raise is not about a technical capability but about ME’s product scope and liability. MyEclipse is built around use-cases that assume a local environment where developers work against a personal instance of an appserver installed on their local machine. We feel that production environment installation and management is a corporate concern for which IDE tools should not be relied upon. We explicitly do not support remote deployment at this time to avoid misuse of ME for production environment purposes.
Now to avoid the hassles of setting up a mirror of your production site (appserver, db, ….) just install Tomcat on your desktop and deploy to it while testing. Modify your test app to connect to the remote database of your server or other services for testing. An alternative is to mount the remote filesystem of server so that ME will see it as a local system. We do this on occasion but never to a production environment.
Our focus has always been about helping developers with their core implementation issues, not production app deployment.
Again, I find this distinction (local / remote deployment location – “developement” / “production”) not adequate.
For us the issue you raise is not about a technical capability but about ME’s product scope and liability.
The issue is clearly about the technical capability of MyEclipse – possibly additionally about the postitioning of MyEclipse due to the descriptions on the Website.
=> add a simple deploy mechanism, at least as a tutorial for using standard eclipse functionality (ftp, WebDAV, SSH) to deploy to a remote location.
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Some experiences with the Java-Hosting:
I am currently dealing with several problems with the java-hosting-provider. I have to learn bash, shells, SSH etc, just to activate my private tomcat installation. I have no problems to do so – but I have problems to accept the necessarity.
Seeing the troubles i run into for a very small project (where developement effort = deployment effort), I understand why PHP, Python and others have a chance to exist beneath JAVA.
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The preliminary summary is:
MyEclipse seems to be able to do many big things – but fails to assist me at a very basic thing: “Turnkeying” my HelloWorld app on a Java-Hosting-Provider’s Tomcat.
The eclipse support talks about distinctions “developement” and “production” – but those things are sometimes the same thing.
I will continue now to setup the project manually, wondering why it takes me days for doing something that could cost half an hour.
[currently waiting for a response of the java hosting provider: tomcats ./shutdown.sh called via SHH fails to do its job.]
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Again, I find this distinction (local / remote deployment location – “developement” / “production”) not adequate.
You are a 1-man operation, I hope you can see that this is why there is no distinction to you. If you are a team of 20, 30 or 50, working on 2 internal development servers and deployed to a pool of 8 production servers once every 3 months, that’s a totally different ballgame that we need to support.
possibly additionally about the postitioning of MyEclipse due to the descriptions on the Website.
Can you provide the link you foudn to that sentence?
but fails to assist me at a very basic thing: “Turnkeying” my HelloWorld app on a Java-Hosting-Provider’s Tomcat.
How is this basic? Every provider is different, some providers don’t even give you a shell, you have to do everything through a web interface. Besides that, please tell us what other IDE you have used or are using that will deploy your application, full packaged, to your hosting provider and how they do it?
The eclipse support talks about distinctions “developement” and “production” – but those things are sometimes the same thing.
Sometimes, in small environments. But we need to please everyone, including corporate contracts.
wondering why it takes me days for doing something that could cost half an hour.
I’m wondering why its taking you days to deploy a package deployment locally, and then upload the WAR file… there is no need to exagerate here, the step of the deployment that MyEclipse does not do for you is the upload of the file, if this really is honestly ruining you days at a time, then I would look into writing an Ant script that did it or a shell script… personally I just use FTP and upload the WAR file.
Quote:
Again, I find this distinction (local / remote deployment location – “developement” / “production”) not adequate.
You are a 1-man operation, I hope you can see that this is why there is no distinction to you. If you are a team of 20, 30 or 50, working on 2 internal development servers and deployed to a pool of 8 production servers once every 3 months, that’s a totally different ballgame that we need to support.
I extract: MyEclipse priority is “corporate customers” and not “single developer”
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possibly additionally about the postitioning of MyEclipse due to the descriptions on the Website.
Can you provide the link you foudn to that sentence?
There is no link. A C++/ASM developer (me) wants to build a webproject and selects java. He evaluates IDE’s and picks eclipse. He evaluates Webtool/J2EE extensions for eclipse and picks MyEclipse. He tries to deploy his HelloWorld to a server – and is wondering.
[after your justifications, I understand. But I still cannot accept, that you don’t provide a full “HelloWorld” example, including deployment.
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but fails to assist me at a very basic thing: “Turnkeying” my HelloWorld app on a Java-Hosting-Provider’s Tomcat.
How is this basic? Every provider is different, some providers don’t even give you a shell, you have to do everything through a web interface. Besides that, please tell us what other IDE you have used or are using that will deploy your application, full packaged, to your hosting provider and how they do it?
I don’t know which IDE deploy’s my application.
As I don’t know, why providers / tool vendors cannot agree on a simple standard (although I’ve heard something about WebDAV, but I don’t know if this would fit here).
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The eclipse support talks about distinctions “developement” and “production” – but those things are sometimes the same thing.
Sometimes, in small environments. But we need to please everyone, including corporate contracts.
I have understood your priorities (large scale developements, corporate customers).
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wondering why it takes me days for doing something that could cost half an hour.
I’m wondering why its taking you days to deploy a package deployment locally, and then upload the WAR file… there is no need to exagerate here, the step of the deployment that MyEclipse does not do for you is the upload of the file, if this really is honestly ruining you days at a time, then I would look into writing an Ant script that did it or a shell script… personally I just use FTP and upload the WAR file.
“deploy” “package” “upload” “WAR” “MyEclipse” “Ant script” “shell script” “FTP”
I would expect that Sun (Java), IBM (eclipse) and finally Genuitec(MyEclipse) are able to encaplsulate the necessary domain-knowledge for creating _and_ deploying (deploying: in the sense of “bringing out to the world) an HelloWorld app to a Server.
Well, it looks they are not – and that i have to do again some handwork.
[The problems I have raise mostly due to the fact that my Java-Hosting-Provider did not provide me with a _real_ private tomcat instance. I will report my findings later, currently I’m searching to solve the problems and in paralell for another Java-Hosting-Service (any suggestions?)]
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[btw: this forum is really unhandy for complex analytical conversation. You should provide standard NNTP newsgroups or better Newsgroups/Mailinglist combination. This is a seperate topic, that I’ll possibly cover in a few days]
But I still cannot accept, that you don’t provide a full “HelloWorld” example, including deployment.
It is part of our Struts Demo (the whole development cycle)
paralell for another Java-Hosting-Service (any suggestions?)
Actually yes, http://www.rimuhosting.com impressed me. They offer IM support so you can IM the team any time you have a question, they were very responsive and helpful. You also get your own virtual server (umode linux, so the system is actually like an entire linux box running in its own VM… you can update the kernel, reboot it, install new packages, compile other ones, install mail servers, game servers… whatever you want) and I found the prices very agreeable.
[btw: this forum is really unhandy for complex analytical conversation. You should provide standard NNTP newsgroups or better Newsgroups/Mailinglist combination. This is a seperate topic, that I’ll possibly cover in a few days]
It has been requested, and while we think it would be slick, we didn’t find a good plugin for phpBB to map the forum conversations over to a newsgroup and visa versa… albeit this isn’t of the highest priority right now, so this might be something we do later.
I’ve been wrestling with a similar issue. I developed a servlet with myEclipse on my Windows XP machine (Java 1.4.2, Eclipse 3.0) with a raw install. I then installed Tomcat 5 locally. After some initial configuration issues, it worked wonderfully and I decided to upload the WAR to the server. It found the .html files, but says that the servlet resource is unavailable. My server is Solaris and I installed the identical version of Tomcat to it. I have tried Tomcat 3.2 as well and am now looking at the configuration files. Web.xml is identical in both places. I would be happy to post this to a new thread if you like, but I think that the remote deployment issue is so similar it seemed germane.
Many thanks,
Henry.
