missing classes after publish web project into tomcat using eclipse wtp - eclipse

I have several dynamic web projects in my workspace, each contains classes and refers to other utility projects (simple Java Projects), and to 3rd party jars.
These apps (dynamic web projects) are deployed on tomcat v6.0.6 using eclipse WTP (Helios 3.6)
When I update my workspace and new classes/resources/jars are extracted from the SVN repository, I re-publish my apps in tomcat apps, and restart it.
Occasionally, when tomcat starts one of my apps, it throws ClassNotFoundException, or complains about other missing resource. Sometimes I see that the a deployed resource (spring beans xml for example) is not up to date, and has 'old' content in it.
The common anti-voodoo-black-magic treatment I use:
* stop / start tomcat
* clean (when right click on the server configuration)
* clean tomcat work directory
* remove all apps from tomcat, clean, restart tomcat, add all apps
I need to run this 'procedure' several time until problem is solved.
Do you guys suffer from it as well ? Is this a known bug ?
Any suggestions how to tackle it ? is using jars instead of utility projects will solve/reduce this problems?
I would consider using Embedded Jetty instead, I just want to avoid from proprietary scripts for running Jetty on a 'production' environment.
-- Yonatan

It happened to me a lot. I wouldn't call that Voodoo. I think that Eclipse WTP doesn't work well when you change stuff in the background (e.g. a maven build).
What I do to solve this is to avoid using it altogether. Instead I use Maven WAR plugin to deploy the application:
mvn war:inplace tomcat:inplace -DskipTests=true
This works very fast, as it doesn't need to assemble, and package the war.
Then to undeploy the application:
mvn tomcat:undeploy
I have scripts that
deploy and start tomact
undeploy and stop tomcat
It looks something like this:
Start tomcat and deploy app:
#!/bin/sh
if [ -f $CATALINA_PID ]; then
echo "tomcat already running with pid " `cat $CATALINA_PID`
exit 1
fi
java -Dmy.arg=val -Dcatalina.home=<catalina-home> -Dlog4j.configuration=file:///log4j.xml -classpath <path-to-tomcat-lib>/bootstrap.jar:/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.20/lib/tools.jar org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap start &
echo $! > $CATALINA_PID
mvn war:inplace tomcat:inplace -DskipTests=true
Undeploy and Stop tomcat:
#!/bin/sh
mvn tomcat:undeploy
<path-to-tomcat>/shutdown.sh -force
rm $CATALINA_PID
The same with probably any other build script - its just a matter of how much code you will have to write.
I chose Maven's war:inplace goal is since it does very little, and thus runs very quickly. See here: maven.apache.org/plugins/maven-war-plugin/usage.html.
BTW, ANT and Gradle have a war task/plugin which can probably be configured to do something similar (I don't really remember...)
Hope this helps.

Another thing to look out for is that Project -> Build Automatically should be enabled and the project should not have any build path problems.
Open the navigator view and confirm that the build folder is having generated class files.
If the files are not being built they won't be published. Though this seems obvious it is easy to over look and wasted a lot of my time.

Interesting behaviour.... Something similar was happening on my Linux machine due to permission issues.
Anyway, i suggest not to use WTP. Try ant build script instead. Its simple and for me it works brilliant.

Been working with Eclipse since it came out, these problems have always existed. Arrived here because atm my web.xml doesn't get deployed anymore. Especially in combination with m2eclipse you'll never know what happens when you try to start your Tomcat. Everybody I know how has worked with Eclipse has these problems, I don't understand why they don't get fixed...and unfortunately working as a contractor means I can't choose my IDE or the container or the way publishing is done, so most of the time I'm stuck with WTP.

I had a similar problem. When I published a web application, Eclipse was not including one of the jar and hence publish to sever through Eclipse fails. I corrected this by modifying the .classpath file of the project to correct dependency as below. To makes sure that its in sync with other jars configuration.
<classpathentry kind="var" path="M2_REPO/log4j/log4j/1.2.17/log4j-1.2.17.jar" sourcepath="M2_REPO/log4j/log4j/1.2.17/log4j-1.2.17-sources.jar">
<attributes>
<attribute name="org.eclipse.jst.component.dependency" value="/WEB-INF/lib"/>
</attributes>
</classpathentry>

It seems progress is being made on solving this problem.
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=365748
Hopefully it will be fixed for the next release of Eclipse.

one possible solution could be that your bin folder is not getting created. check that you have not deleted build/bin folder and it does exists in your work space.

Related

Google App Engine, Maven and Eclipse development setup

I'll try keep this short. I have Eclipse with an installed M2E (Maven to Eclipse) plugin. I have a GAE (Google App Engine) project I'm working on. Everything is working ok apart from one really annoying thing: I have to stop/start the devserver every time I make a change.
If you have any experience with this setup then you might be able to answer this simple question?
I start the development server with "mvn appegnine:devserver" on the command line. Now I would expect that if I made changes to a *.jsp for example that those changes would automatically be updated on the devserver. Is this what happens with you?
I have noticed that if I make changes to *.jsp files under my target folder then devserver will see those changes and updates as I would expect. I think my problem lies with Eclipse not copying changes to target folder, but not sure if is even suppose to?
Does anyone have any suggestions on how I should progress investigating this? I've ran out of ideas :-/
I thank you in advance for any comments you may have.
P.s I know I can run "mvn package" to update files, but this is slow and the devserver runs out of memory after a do it twice.
This can be little painful, depending on how you want to work and which version of eclipse you're using.
Install the m2e-wtp plugin if you haven't. It's the secret sauce that makes appengine projects work in eclipse. Note this isn't m2e - but another plugin.
Install the GPE - the google plugin for eclipse if you haven't
Make sure your project is being managed by m2e as a maven project.
Go into your project properties - enable it as an appengine project using the GPE (listed under 'Google'). Don't forget to tick HRD while you're here.
Go to your project build path (Properties -> Java Build Path).
Ensure on the source tab that your src/main/resources doesnt have an ** exclusion.
Ensure on the libraries tab your have the three libraries 'JDK', 'Google Appengine' and 'Maven Dependencies' and nothing else
Ensure on the order and export tab that the appengine dependencies are above the maven dependencies.
It sounds pretty ridiculous - i'm not really sure why its still so painful, but that is a good recipe for success. Once that's done, this should allow you to run in debug from eclipse itself, with hotloading of code, jsps, css, scripts etc. I've had this work in helios, indigo and juno.
You can read more about the m2e-wtp setup instructions here. They refer to GWT but it's the same for appengine (I'm not sure why the emphasis on using GWT on GAE) because its actually about the correct setup of GPE and Maven.
You will also find that you may need to repeat some parts of step 5 pretty frequently - if your app isn't loading properly take a quick look to ensure that your resources haven't been excluded. This happens when you update your project configuration using the m2e plugin.
The wtp-m2e plugin updates the target folder as resources modified - so this should also resolve your issues running from the command line, but i can't vouch for that - I prefer to run straight out of eclipse.
I have the same problem as you, however I resolved with other way. I use FileSync plugin (which can be found in the market place).
With this plugin you configure an input directory (webapp) and output directory (target).
Any change made to the webapp will be passed to the target.
I have helped too.
You can use rsync like this:
rsync -r --existing src/main/webapp/ target/ROOT
where "ROOT" is the project build finalName.
The below point worked for me.
Ensure on the order and export tab that the appengine dependencies are above the maven dependencies.

Eclipse JBoss hot code replace

I am using Eclipse 4.2 and JBoss 7.
I have Build automatically checked in Eclipse.
Even then I have to build and redeploy the EAR file to JBOSS to test any code changes I make in Eclipse debug mode.
Am I missing something here?
THanks,
What the "Build automatically" option in eclipse do is that when you modify the source code of a class, this one will be automatically compiled, which doesn't mean that all the whole project that contains the class (i.e. war, jar, ear ...) is redeployed in the server. But of course it helps in the speed of deployment, because the classes you've been modifying are already compiled when you manually build or deploy the project.
On the other hand, to avoid problems with redeployments, you'd better set up JBoss to delete the files related to the application keeps in the work directory, when the application is undeployed / redeployed. Look at this stackoverflow thread for more information.
Concerning the "Build automatically" option:
In order for the Deployment Scanner in JBoss to work, you have to have it turned on in JBoss.
Also, you need to add your project to the JBoss server in the Servers window. Look for the "Add or Remove..." option.
Once your project is added, any changes you make to your code will get detected and your module will be redeployed automatically in the background. Failing that and assuming your project doesn't have a snag, you can use mvn install & mvn jboss-as:deploy to manual update your module.
Beware, sometimes mvn doesn't pick up the latest java code. This seems to be a project configuration issue more than anything. Re-creating the project seems to correct the issue.
Also, keep an eye out for duplicate persistence.xml files.
You only need one.

Eclipse + JBoss - some JAR files not deployed

I have an Eclipse Indigo installation with a JBoss 6 server managed by it. I have a Maven project with a few modules. These modules all build just fine from the command line.
One of the modules is an EAR. This is dependent on two JAR modules and a couple of WAR modules. When I package the EAR from the command line (mvn clean package), the EAR contains all the necessary JAR and WAR files. However, when I deploy it from Eclipse, the two module JAR files are missing from JBoss. The WAR files are just fine. Inside the "Add and Remove..." dialog the JAR files are also present, but not when deployed. I've checked JBoss' deployments folder and there they are indeed missing. The strange thing is, with the exact same POMs and code, all of my colleagues with the same(?) setup don't have this problem.
The two JAR modules are listed in the dependency management part of the parent POM. They are also listed as dependencies in the EAR POM. Still, Eclipse refuses to deploy them with the EAR.
Does anybody have any idea how I can solve this issue? I can manually package and deploy the EAR, but 1) that takes longer, and 2) I can't use Eclipse's debugging functionality this way.
Note: previously asked at http://www.coderanch.com/t/580959/vc/Eclipse-JBoss-some-JAR-files
Right mouse button on project -> Maven -> Update project
I experienced the exact same issue, different eclipse (Eclipse Mars, WildFly 8.1 ).
The unsettling part was that I didn't change anything in the code or in the IDE (that I am aware of) and it started malfunctioning.
I suspect it has something to do with the cached memory of eclipse for it's plugins, anyway, after many hours of trying different things we fixed it by deleting the folder .eclipse under your user in windows.
Seems silly, but we tried everything except that, and that thing did the trick
I'm encountering a similar issue, however my environment is much, much simpler - being a web project, with a utility project. Not using maven at all and deploying to tomcat7.
The class file is not being deployed to the web-inf as expected, although the utility project is referenced, and marked as to be exported.
However with your issue, I came across this post:
http://blog.frankel.ch/better-maven-integration-leads-to-unforeseen-consequences-bugs#comments
which might provide a clue. Hope this helps.
I had the same issue. I didn't modify my code at all, I deleted all the projects from the work space, closed eclipse and reopened it. Then I did a clean and build of the project (which took much longer than before). This time when I went to add the EAR project, it had all the dependencies listed and actually worked.

Efficient dev cycle with Maven, Tomcat/Glassfish, Archetype?

So far i've been using tomcat and glassfish to develop a testing webapp, without maven. And the usual development-till-deploy cycle is simple :
develop in eclipse ide, with a WebContent folder, which is the root webapp folder that has the WEB-INF, web.xml, WEB-INF/lib, n all. The compiled classes location in eclipse is set to WEB-INF/classes.
after coding, i could just click on the reload button in glassfish admin console for that specific webapp. In tomcat, i believe it's reload also in the tomcat manager.
i could access the web application in the browser
Now if i would like to create a new webapp, that'll make use of latest stuffs of jsf, spring, jpa, hibernate, postgresql :
what recommendation of archetype should i use in the creation of the project ?
can i still use my previous steps of development? because i think it's very easy without having to repackage everything into a war file, or copying it into the tomcat's webapp folder everytime i want to test. Saving the files in eclipse, hit on the reload in the admin console / tomcat manager, and i could instantly test the updated webapp.
Or what do you usually do in the webapp development cycle ? Please share your experiences, =)
Thank you !
Development Cycle with Maven and Friends
Use Maven to drive your code-build-test-deploy-release cycle.
Start with Maven Archetype that suits closest to your web-app. This will create the whole folder structure for you and will add Jar depencies.
Use an embeded light-weight server like Jetty, this will be very fast on dev machine without sucking resources and is highly configurable. Plus, you can set it to auto-reload changes.
Most of Maven project are supposed to be test-driven. Of which Maven takes care of using it's surefire plug-in. So, every build will have a test phase.
You can define multiple profile for various environments (test, dev, prod, Win, Unix..). These profile will alter the behaviour of the project to be compatible with the environment.
Use Cargo, again a Maven plugin to deploy your builds on test or production server, which can be Glassfish, Tomcat, Jetty or any oter webserver.
Use Liquibase with or without Maven :) to manage your database changes the same way you manage your code change.
I came from almost similar project as yours in my previous company. Development with Maven makes things so smooth and the change is appreciable.
A little Google search shows that someone has worked on archetypes for JSF and JPA with Spring
Edit#1 -- added more details
Feasibility and Ease of Use
Maven is born out of neccessity to simplify the dev process for large and distributed code.
Maven is very well integrated with Eclipse -- so it's painless.
Jetty keeps monitoring source folders, so your changes gets deployed almost immediately.
You can customize the build to skip tests, to not build dependecies. When you just edit a UI component, Jetty will silently copy it to "target" folder.
If you're worried about copying and redeploying. You must read THIS to see how efficiently things are done, keeping in mind that you don't have to compile-test-deploy everytime you change a JSP or HTML.
That said, I would like to mention that Maven might be a challanging learning. This is an object oriented way of development cycle, to say. Most of us, who are used to build script, can find a bit tedious/verbose initially.
Resources
I would suggest to go through the following resources
Maven Book - Maven basics
Automated Deployment with Maven - going the whole nine yards If you can, literally follow this pattern.
Maven 2 Effective Implementation -- this book really helped us a lot.
for the q2 :
You can still run/debug app with tomcat from within the IDE (eclipse) even if you change the directory structure. (like the maven dir structure instead of eclipse's dynamic web dir structure)
Project properties - >
project facets - >
Dynamic Web Module ->
Click the appearing "further configuration available"
and set your content dir and context root.
You dont have to package everytime you want to run/debug it.
Another option is using Jetty
And I am sure there are more options others will tell as well.

Java maven development slow

I am developing a war/java website that is built via maven.
Currently, I have to make changes... tell maven to build them... then deploy to Tomcat. This is around 40seconds. So every change I make, I have to wait >=40seconds to see the change.
This is becoming very frustrating, so I have tried to speed up the deployment. I deployed the site via maven with war:exploded. Now, I edit the files live in 'deployed' format. The problem being I will need to move these changes back to the source location for pushing into our source control.
So has anyone written a script to 'undeploy' changes on the server carefully pointing them back to where maven expects them to be, or found another way I can instantly see my changes in a web browser. Rebuilding from source everytime is not a fun solution.
Currently, I have to make changes... tell maven to build them... then deploy to Tomcat. This is around 40seconds. So every change I make, I have to wait >=40seconds to see the change.
This is just a wrong way to use Maven in my opinion.
Either use something light like jetty:run (and hook Eclipse remote debugger to enable hotswap), see Configuring Jetty, Maven, and Eclipse together with Hot Swap.
Or use Eclipse WTP and deploy your project on a Tomcat server inside Eclipse (your project can be recognized as a Dynamic Web project whether you're using m2eclipse or the Maven Eclipse plugin).
Have you tried JavaRebel?
http://www.zeroturnaround.com/jrebel/
Use hot-deployment.
Just configure tomcat-maven-plugin and try tomcat:redeploy.