Hi Ashish,
Inline ->
On 7/2/26 14:24, Ashish Vijaywargiya wrote:
Hello Jacques and Geatan,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. They were very helpful. π
You're most welcome :D
I thought about my implementation again and updated it a bit. The
implementation (WatchService + in-process compiler + a child-first
classloader) lives entirely in a small plugin, published separately at
https://github.com/ashishvijaywargiya/devreload. This plugin is available
to anyone, and anyone can clone it if required.
I'm much more confortable with this approach.
I can also move it to the ofbiz-plugins folder if the community members
agree to put the "devreload" component codebase there.
I'm still not confortable with this. Any code in the plugins repository
means it become the community's responsability to maintain, and we
already have a lot of work going on.
To make the framework pick up hot-reloaded classes when that plugin is
present, I need a small footprint in ofbiz-framework itself: a reflective
bridge, a small file DevReloadHook.java, plus one gated classloader check
each in StandardJavaEngine and JavaEventHandler.
I'm not sure if it is a good practice to leave some code for a plugins
in the framework, even more so if the plugin isn't commited in the
plugins repo.
The framework (IMO) shouldn't hold code that serves ONLY for a plugin.
I think a patch in the relevant plugin repo or readme might be enough.
Branch for reference:
https://github.com/apache/ofbiz-framework/compare/trunk...ashishvijaywargiya:ofbiz-framework:dev-reload-container-support
Hopefully, now the changes in the "dev-reload-container-support" branch can
be merged into the OFBiz trunk code.
To demonstrate the feature, I have added a new field "comments2" on the
form, and then made the changes in services.xml, and then made the changes
in OfbizDemoServices.java file. The changes in services.xml and java files
are reflected without restarting OFBiz.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1W5ILWVOSBD956GcDT50-GmZkV_seMNRv?usp=sharing
I have made the changes in a demo component -
https://github.com/ashishvijaywargiya/ofbizDemo.
Please let me know your thoughts on this.
Again I'm sorry, I don't want to be a bad guy here, but your own
external plugin (that might be referenced on the tools page of the
projects wiki) is the way to go IMO.
Best regards,
Gaetan
I will also explore the HotSwap plugin in IntelliJ IDEA and get back with
my thoughts.
Thank you.
--
Kind Regards,
Ashish Vijaywargiya
Vice President of Operations
*HotWax Systems*
*Enterprise open source experts*
http://www.hotwaxsystems.com
On Wed, Jul 1, 2026 at 9:49β―PM Jacques Le Roux via dev <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hi,
I tend to agree with Gaetan.
Jacques
Le 01/07/2026 Γ 09:18, gaetan.chaboussie via dev a Γ©crit :
Hello Ashish, hello all.
First, thanks for the effort put into this. Seems like a lot of work
(even if it looks like there has been some AI help on the code).
This being said, I'm not sure how i feel seeing a 'developer only'
intended feature in the project code.
I think that it's the IDE's job to provide this kind of feature. In my
experience, Eclipse handles it natively pretty well, and Intellij is making
great progress (and has a Hotsawp plugin that i personally use).
Also, i believe that it's precisely the point of GroovyScripts to allow
editing without recompiling.
Although I understand the idea, I would personnaly not advise this
change, that creates low level code changes, and looks tricky to maintain.
Gaetan.
On 6/30/26 18:03, Ashish Vijaywargiya wrote:
Hello OFBiz Dev Community,
I would like to share a prototype that removes the need to restart OFBiz
when developing Java services, events and service
definitions(services.xml).
Many years ago I came across Tomcat's reloadable="true" context
attribute.
When enabled, Tomcat's application deployer watches for class file
changes
and
automatically reloads the web application β no server restart, no manual
step. I always thought that was a great developer experience, and at the
back of my mind I wondered whether something similar could be done in
OFBiz.
The standard Java change cycle in OFBiz today is:
edit .java β ./gradlew classes β kill OFBiz β wait 30-60 s β restart β
test
Groovy scripts and Freemarker templates already pick up changes without
a
restart; Java does not. This prototype brings the same convenience to
Java
development, specifically targeting *Services.java and *Events.java
files
which are the ones developers touch most during active feature work.
--- What it does ---
A new class called DevReloadContainer is added to framework/base. It is
activated by passing -Dofbiz.hotreload=true on startup and does three
things:
1. Watches build/classes/java/main/ for changed .class files and
hot-swaps them into a fresh class loader without restarting OFBiz.
In practice this means saving a *Services.java or *Events.java
file
is enough β the change is live in under a second.
2. Watches all component servicedef/ directories and clears the service
model cache when any *services.xml file changes, so new or
modified
service definitions are picked up immediately.
3. Watches all component src/main/java/ directories and compiles changed
.java files in-process (using javax.tools.JavaCompiler), so you
do not
need a second terminal running ./gradlew -t classes.
A 300 ms debounce window batches a burst of file-save events into a
single
reload, so rapid edits do not cause multiple reloads.
--- The new dev workflow ---
A new Gradle task wraps everything into one command:
./gradlew ofbizDev
Start OFBiz with that command, then edit any *Services.java,
*Events.java,
or *services.xml file and save β changes are live without any restart.
The working code is on branch dev-reload-container-support.
https://github.com/ashishvijaywargiya/ofbiz-framework/tree/dev-reload-container-support
https://github.com/apache/ofbiz-framework/compare/trunk...ashishvijaywargiya:ofbiz-framework:dev-reload-container-support
The implementation went through several rounds of debugging and
covers 32 test cases including child-first class loading, multi-cycle
reload correctness,
inner and anonymous class reloading, concurrent class loading,
malformed-bytecode handling, shutdown races, and the macOS
spurious-event
suppression.
Please review this feature and let me know your thoughts/feedback.
And please report any issues you find.
Very soon, I will be creating a pull request for this feature.
I am hopeful that this feature will be helpful to all developers who are
building enterprise applications using the Apache OFBiz project. π
Thank you.
--
Kind Regards,
Ashish Vijaywargiya
Vice President of Operations
*HotWax Systems*
*Enterprise open source experts*
http://www.hotwaxsystems.com
