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I have recently decided to evaluate MyEclipse in hopes of finding an IDE that will improve upon the annoyances I have dealt with while using Eclipse with WebTools over the past year. In general I would rank Eclipse with WebTools my second favorite IDE behind IntelliJ’s IDEA. The reason for this is that it lacks a module to allow me to customize the deployment of my project. What I mean by this is that an IDE should not dictate how my project’s structure is defined. For example, you should not have to put your JSP’s in a folder under the “WebRoot”. If I want to structure my project logically then I should be able to do so. For example, I put my JSP’s in a folder called WebTier that is not under a “WebRoot”. Then at deploy time I should be able to map this folder to a virtual folder under “WebRoot”. This should apply to every item in a web application. You could think of this as an ant task that creates a deployment for you by copying files in a logical location in your project to their deployed location. IntelliJ’s IDEA has this feature at a folder level but it would be even nicer if you could control it at both a folder and file level.
Since MyEclipse features web application development I was hoping it would provide this capability but I have been unable to find it. The documentation sticks to setting up a web project only one way and the only configuration is to change one source folder name and one web root name. I don’t understand why when you create a web project you can not define any number of source folders, web roots, or anything else that is a deployable component.
One feature that does work in the manner for which I am searching is the library deployment policies. These are found under the Deployment tab under the MyEclipse-Web section of your project’s properties. This is exactly what I would like to see for every facet of my project. Not just libraries.
Despite Eclipse with WebTools problems you could overcome this lack of flexibility by deciphering an XML file named .component in the .settings folder that Eclipse creates in your project. It allows you to define your deployment mappings. The problem is that I could find no documentation, XML schema or DTD that described all of my options in that file. I assume it was not meant to be tampered with. Does MyEclipse have a configuration file that I can “tamper” with? If so, is this recommended and is there documentation for it?
I am a consultant and if I move into an assignment with an existing project who knows what the project structure looks like. I would like to make MyEclipse my IDE of choice but if I can not taylor it to allow me to work with any kind of project structure then it’s going to give me fits! Additionally I am in a position on my current project to advise my client to encourage the developers in this department to start using MyEclipse. Hence my reason for evaluating it.
My apologies for the lengthy and disorganized discussion. Is Eclipse aware of this issue or have any plans to add this sort of functionality?
Cheers,
Rick
Uour point here of Logical versus Physical project layout is exactly on the button. We have been wanting to get rid of our strict project structure from day 1 and actually created the spec of flexi-project-layout that was developed by the WTP team and will be adopted in MyEclipse 5.x (not confirmed yet for 5.0)
Rick your reasoning for this support really is spot on. This is exactly how it should work. We haven’t done this yet because after we created the spec and provided it to the WTP team there was no reason to duplicate this work. So that team has been hard at work getting flexible project support into WTP and when it is ready and intuitive we will adopt it and hopefully finally allow users to do just what you said (logical mappings to physical dirs). We are sorry for the delay in this, but management is very strict about moving on a technology only when it is stable and ready for mass consumption. We have a lot of users to answer to.
Hang in there a bit longer, I will personally push for this as soon as it is ready.
Hi, I am also a consultant, and I have a client that has a non-war deployment structure. I am struggling with the same issue. And I’m afraid, although I like myeclipse, it is just not going to be able to help me. Therefore, I won’t be renewing my subscription this year. I wish you all the best of luck, and whenever you are able to support a flexible web deployment structure, feel free to drop me an email. You will find it in my subscriber information.
Best,
John La BargeAmen to flexible project layout! Anyone who deals with legacy projects will find fixed layout requirements to be a frustration. As a stopgap, I can suggest using symbolic linking in the source tree as a short term stopgap until the root problem is addressed. For Windows, have a look at Junction (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Junction.html) as a tool to help with this.
@support-rkalla wrote:
Uour point here of Logical versus Physical project layout is exactly on the button. We have been wanting to get rid of our strict project structure from day 1 and actually created the spec of flexi-project-layout that was developed by the WTP team and will be adopted in MyEclipse 5.x (not confirmed yet for 5.0)
Hi guys,
Do you have any updates on this issue? I’m really looking for a possibility I can “import” my existing projects as J2EE MyEclipse projects.
Waldemar
Waldemar,
Unfortunately no new news on this issue. WTP is almost there but not there quite yet. We did make some enhancements to the project flexibility and deployment to help users in a bind, but you still can’t build your project layout out from random disjointed folders.@support-rkalla wrote:
Waldemar,
Unfortunately no new news on this issue. WTP is almost there but not there quite yet. We did make some enhancements to the project flexibility and deployment to help users in a bind, but you still can’t build your project layout out from random disjointed folders.Hi there,
Please excuse my next question, but I would like to clearify it for myself. If I undestand correctly, you are going to integrate WTP with MyEclipse? Do you have any timelines for this integration?
I’m asking, because with WTP it is possible to deploy any resource anywhere, although there isn’t any GUI for that, one has to edit a config file, which is pretty straightforward.
Maybe this configuration file tweaking is possible with MyEclipse as well?
Waldemar
Please excuse my next question, but I would like to clearify it for myself. If I undestand correctly, you are going to integrate WTP with MyEclipse? Do you have any timelines for this integration?
MyEclipse has been building ontop of WTP for a few years now. The only things we are waiting on maturing before we adopt them are the project layout and deployment/server management controls. We just didn’t feel they were signifigantly improved over what we have now in the 1.5 release and there is still a lot of flux going on in WTP, so we don’t want to be playing the chasing game. We will wait for them to stabalize then adopt them, the WTP team is doing good work.
@support-rkalla wrote:
MyEclipse has been building ontop of WTP for a few years now. The only things we are waiting on maturing before we adopt them are the project layout and deployment/server management controls. We just didn’t feel they were signifigantly improved over what we have now in the 1.5 release and there is still a lot of flux going on in WTP, so we don’t want to be playing the chasing game. We will wait for them to stabalize then adopt them, the WTP team is doing good work.
Well, I’ve been able to deploy with WTP any resource for a year, as I said – I have to modify WTP’s config file (although its location changed some time ago). As MyEclipse is ontop of WTP, is there any way to pass some configuration directly to WTP, which is (in my case) something like that (as in WTP1.5):
<wb-resource deploy-path=”/mydestination” source-path=”/res/myResource”/>
Waldemar
bilbek….I think you are talking about the .component file I mentioned in the first post in this thread. I found that the version of that file that is created when you create a project gives you a good enough example to map most of your resources. If that is the only way to perform this mapping I would like to see a detailed description of all the options that are available to me in that file. For example an XML schema or DTD would do. That way I can feel more confident in what I am trying to accomplish.
I never found a way to do this with MyEclipse. I really like Eclipse with Web Tools and MyEclipse but I simply can’t use them with the lack of a flexible project structure. Does anyone see any light at the end of the tunnel? Any idea when this will be implemented? For now I am using IntelliJ IDEA which is an awesome IDE but I’d like to have Eclipse at my disposal as I move from client to client.
