Eclipse / Aptana File Sync Solutions

Question

Our development team uses Eclipse + Aptana to do their web development work. Currently, most of them are mapping their Eclipse projects directly to the web server. I'd rather them create a local project and use that to sync to the web server project directory they are working on.

The issue is that there aren't any good solutions which is just appalling given the popularity of the two.

The FileSync plugin for Eclipse is only one-way. Meaning if another developer makes a change to the file on the server, another dev isn't even notified and could overwrite the change.

The File Transfer option in Aptana 2.0 doesn't support any sort of Sync, just manually uploading/downloading files.

The Sync option in Aptana 1.5.1 doesn't allow you to merge files when they are different. You can only update one or the other. It does however allow you to view a diff (but only if you right click and select) and in that diff you can't make any changes.

I did find a way to allow files to be uploaded to their Sync repositories in Aptana using Eclipse Monkey. However it doesn't work if a user saves multiple files at once, 'Save All', again it doesn't work. And additionally, there is no notification if a user opens a local file that has an updated copy on the server. I tried to add one using Eclipse Monkey but I couldn't find any sort of listener in the Eclipse API to do it and any Eclipse Monkey documentation is far and few between.

My only solution at this point is just to let them continue to map directly to the server or ask them to do a manual download before they do any work (but again what if someone uploads a change right after they do that).

Anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

April 2010

Add EGit to your Eclipse+Aptana setup, and:

• let developers push to a local bare repo their developments (see also this post)
• let your local project be updated by a git pull from that same local bare repo (creating/updating) a local working directory with sources merged/updated (or by using a post-update hook as described in my previous SO link)
• let your local Aptana+Eclipse(+EGit) reference that local working directory, also used by your web server.

In short, when you are speaking of file synchronization + merges, this is a job for a (D)VCS (Version Control System: Centralized or Distributed VCS)

---

Oct 2011: as xmedeko mentions in the comments, Aptana3 has its own Git plugin.
And it isn't very compatible with EGit: See bug 1988.

Answer 2

Adding to VonC answer (which is correct IMHO), what probably lies beneath this scenario is that the process you adopted is not correct in itself, apart from the tools used.

If I understood well, you should not allow nor perform a direct upload from a development version of the project to the web server. Merging is not a job for remote synchronization tools, and it should happen well before the deployment phase (upload to web server is practically a deploy).

You should have a dedicated repository taken from some point in development history (according to you release timeline), a point where merge has already happened. Then deploy it (by means of file synchronization if you want, but that is not mandatory) on a local/staging web server.

Perform there any test you run on the web site actively running (i.e. integration and/or functional tests). If there's any bug & fixing, well there are different ways to actually apply the fixes on development & staging code repository. Only after that, you deploy the staging repository on to production web server (again, synchronization tools are a way to do that).