Hey all,
Many of you have reported incompatibilities between the Google Plugin for
Eclipse and other build systems/project structures, most notably Maven and
J2EE/Dynamic Web Projects. For example, issue 1515 (Eclipse plugin requires
fixed location for war
directory)<http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1515>
has
collected well over 100 stars, and a similar one in the GWT issue tracker
has attracted a lot of attention as well. Based on this feedback, we've
decided to try and address as many of the incompatibilities as possible with
our upcoming 1.3 release of the plugin. To deliver on that goal, we want to
share with your our current plans, and also let you know about a preview
build that we'll make available so you can test the changes for yourself and
give us feedback before final release.
Our plans for the 1.3 release include 4 changes designed to make integration
with Maven and J2EE projects easier:
1. The WAR directory can now be configured to be *any* project-relative
path (e.g. src/main/webapp if you're using Maven). You'll also be able
to specify whether that directory is source-only (typical Maven/J2EE
scenario), or whether it should also function as the WAR output directory
from which to run/debug or deploy to App Engine. If your WAR directory is
input *and* output (which will remain the default for new Web App
projects), the plugin will manage synchronizing the contents of WEB-INF/lib
WEB-INF/classes with your project's build path and compiled output.
Otherwise, we'll leave your WAR source directory alone and you'll need to
specify your WAR output location when launching, deploying, etc (the plugin
will remember the location once you set it the first time).
2. The Web App launch configuration UI is being redesigned to allow you
to see, and if necessary change, *any* of the launch arguments.
Previously, we were waiting until launch time to set many of these
arguments based on heuristics that were invisible and inaccessible to you.
Now you'll be in full control of how your projects get launched. Also,
we're adding the capability to automatically migrate your launch
configurations when necessary, for example, updating the -javaagent flag
when changing App Engine SDKs.
3. GWT/App Engine projects will no longer require our SDK library on the
classpath. This means Maven users will be able to pull in JAR files from
their M2 repository as they're accustomed to and the plugin won't mind a
bit.
4. The severity of any problem marker generated by the plugin will be
fully customizable via an Errors/Warnings preference page (similar to the
Java Errors/Warnings page), letting you specify either Error, Warning, or
Ignore.
We'll also be including a few smaller features and bug fixes as well.
What does everyone think about the 4 changes outlined above? We've been
testing the plugin against various Maven and J2EE configurations to try to
ensure that we've eliminated the most critical roadblocks. However, we're
very interested in also having you folks take it for a spin before the
official release date (slated for next month). We're not quite ready yet,
but stay tuned for a 1.3 preview build to be made available hopefully in a
few weeks. We'll distribute it as a zip file for dropin
installation<http://code.google.com/eclipse/docs/install-from-zip.html>
so
it will come with the standard warnings and caveats (use with a clean
Eclipse install and workspace, use at your risk, etc.). However, it will
hopefully give you a chance to give us any last-minute feedback about our
changes before the final release.
Thanks,
Keith
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