Deploy & Debug remote Jetty with IntelliJ 12

Question

I've been hacking and googling for a while now, and I've found several statck overflow threads that seemed like they were written for older versions of intellij, with various application servers. Usually they tell you to enter

java -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=51887,suspend=n,server=y

One answer suggests using something like

-agentlib:jdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=51887,suspend=n,server=y

But then I get this:

Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not find agent library: libjdwp:transport.jnilib (searched /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0_37-b06-434.jdk/Contents/Libraries:/System/Library/Java/Extensions:/Library/Java/Extensions:.)

Then after one or the other of the above they tell you something like "Edit Configurations> jetty > remote and enter localhost, 51887" (the port number varies)

However in 12, the page you land on after you select remote has a plethora of options, and is asking for JNDI ports, not jdwp ports on another tab it actually suggests the jdwp parameters above.

Researching the JNDI port bit, generally yields instructions to add args like this to your command line...

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote= \
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1099 \
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false\

I've done that too and I can see port 1099 held by java (using lsof) and I can telnet to 1099, so I know the JVM is listening. (We'll try not to worry about the fact that that appears to say, open up a port by which anyone install arbitrary java code over the network to your computer without a password)

However, in Intellij whenever I try to deploy and debug it gives me the following message:

I can see java RMI communications over 1099 when I snoop port 1099 with wireshark (but they are illegible). Evidently, the communications are not satisfactory for Intellij, so I'm wondering if there's something I need to do to Jetty to get it to play nice. Note that changing the Jetty version is not presently an option, so let's not go there :).

I've also tried removing the artifact, disabling make, and trying to just connect the debugger, but it still gives me the same red baloon and error message, so evidently the JNDI (port 1099) part is required.

Does anyone see something I'm doing wrong, or know of something else I should do to get this to work?

(I'm wondering if it is something similar to this: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-65746 jboss issue)

Edit: Thanks to this google groups post I've discovered that it is possible to get the debugger connected if you don't specify Edit Configurations> + > jetty > remote, but instead choose Edit Configurations > + > remote, but debug and deploy is what I'm after so that's only a half solution.

Answer 1

Jetty remote configuration requires several manual steps which are performed automatically when you start Jetty directly from IDEA using the local configuration instead.

If you absolutely must use the remote configuration, try the following steps:

In the Remote staging section of the Server tab of the IDEA Jetty remote run configuration:

• specify Same file system for Type and Host
• specify path to the <Jetty home>/contexts folder in the Local path field of the contexts section

(settings will differ if you have Jetty running on another machine than IDEA, but I assume it's the same machine in your case)

Pass the following VM parameters to the Jetty process:

-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote=
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=<JNDI port>
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false
-Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false
-DOPTIONS=jmx

<JNDI port> value should be the same as specified in the JNDI port field of the IDEA Jetty run configuration

Pass the following configuration files to the Jetty process (in the command line):

• etc/jetty-jmx.xml
• etc/jetty.xml

If you need to debug, you should also pass to Jetty process VM parameters taken from IDEA Jetty run configuration: Startup/Connection tab, select Debug list item under the To debug remote server JVM ...

Here is the sample command line to start Jetty process with all the required options:

java -Xdebug -Xrunjdwp:transport=dt_socket,address=60208,suspend=n,server=y -DSTOP.PORT=0 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote= -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=1099 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -DOPTIONS=jmx -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -classpath start.jar etc/jetty-jmx.xml etc/jetty.xml