Any way of working with Eclipse WTP that does not mean redeploying the _WHOLE_ application when a JSP page is changed

Question

I have migrated a Web Application from MyEclipse to Eclipse WTP, and I am now in the middle of the first major upgrade to the code base and web pages after the migration, and it is frankly driving me mad that saving a JSP page causes a redeployment of the WHOLE application, as it takes time and that my backend connection does not survive the serialization-deserialization of the session object (which is non-trivial to fix). In addition to that the JSP-editor is insanely slow so I frequently have to pause to let the editor catch up to be certain where my edits go in a small JSP using JavaServer Faces. Disabling validation did not help.

The Eclipse Dynamic Web Project depends on several library eclipse projects so I cannot just tell e.g. Jetty to use the WebRoot folder, as several dependencies are then missing from the classpath.

The question is:

• Is there a way of working - ANY way of working - with the Eclipse WTP system that does NOT imply redeploying everything every time any file is saved?

I can use Tomcat 5.5 or Jetty 6 as servers.

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EDIT: Having the JSP-editor being able to keep up would be really nice too...

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EDIT: The JSP-pages in question contain JSF-tags (myfaces 1.1.4, tomahawk 1.1.9), if that makes a difference?

Answer 1

in your Tomcat server settings in eclipse you should enable the option 'Serve modules without publishing' (see below how to do this)

this is the solution i use and it enables me to view changes in JSP's immediately without republishing or anything else (on Tomcat 5.5 + regular dynamic web project + JSP's are in WebContent directory) so i don't go nuts when developing Java apps:

how to do this:

• open the Server view
• double click on your server to open the server settings
• in the 'Publishing' section (top-right) select the option 'Never publish automatically' (as said in some other answers to your question) to avoid a publish action when you change something
• this is the most IMPORTANT: in the 'Server Options' section (bottom left) select the option 'Serve modules without publishing'. now your changes are picked up without redeploy

UPDATE: you should also make sure that the libraries you depend on (those on your build path) are 'copied' to WEB-INF/lib while developing in Eclipse (do this by selecting the appropriate JARs/projects in the Java EE Module Dependencies section in the Preferences dialog of your web project). with all these settings in place tomcat will run the web application from your workspace project with the WebContent dir as root of the web app.

enjoy

Answer 2

I'll throw-in another suggestion, which is more of a workaround.

You can use the FileSync plugin to synchronize your bin and webroot directories with your servlet-container. You will have to use the original installation, and not workspace metadata this way. Then, after starting the server in debug mode, everything is hot-deployed.

I have successfully used this approach with glassfish 2.

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Another thing is to check the configuration options of the server in your Servers project (it should have a folder there). It might be the case that some debug or hot-deploy option is switched off.

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As for the speed of the JSP editor - well, disabling validation is the first thing to do, and you've done it. Honestly, my jsp pages (containing jsf tags, and actually using facelets) don't have any major problems with speed. Perhaps use a fresh installation?

Answer 3

You can disable automatic publishing in Eclipse if you need to:

1. Open the Servers View.
2. Double-click on your server in the view. this will bring up the Server Overview configuration page.
3. Find the "Publishing" section on the page (upper-right corner).
4. Select the "Never publish automatically" option.

This will avoid the "publish after every save" problem. However, with this turned off you will have to manually deploy any time you want your changes to show up in your server.