[m2e-dev] War overlays alternative

[László Váradi <laszlo.varadi@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,

regarding war overlays, we have some minor problems, which is really related to WTP itself, not m2e-wtp. This is addressed in a server publish configuration, and in a resource change listener to call server's publish on resource change.

But we have faced a much bigger problem, which is also related (I think) to WTP. Somehow, if server is in autopublish mode, some overlaid resources are deleted. Just editing a .js file, saving it, the server publishes it, but suddenly, the whole webapp is broken. Only a clean on the server can resolve the problem, a simple publish won't fix the missing resources.

And as tomcat server adapter cannot handle m2e-wtp consumed references in "serve modules without publishing" configuration (https://issues.sonatype.org/browse/MECLIPSEWTP-164) (as we trying to avoid publishing now), I've just created an alternative way of configuring overlays using linked folders: https://github.com/vazul/m2eclipse-wtp/commits/overlays_alternative

I'm just wondering, if you review it, it can be part of the main m2e-wtp source. There is a flag in Maven WTP Integration preferences page to switch between the two modes.

It has some drawbacks: cannot handle excludes and includes. War overlay artifacts not present in workspace exploded without web.xml and WEB-INF/lib content, but nothing more (well this can be handled on project level, but we decided to extract war overlay artifacts under the plugin's state location... maybe not a good decision). Well it fits for us... with lots of overlays.

We are also just testing this configuration, but I'm curious about your opinion.

Best regards,

Vazul