Package dependency analyser plug in idea - feedbac requested

[Ben Jessel]

I have an idea for a tool, but I thought I would just subject it you
all to see whether it is viable, if indeed useful.

When you create an EJB, you have to be quite careful what classses are
actually in your EJB; you don't want servlet or IO classes. You also
don't want to bloat your jars with pattern matching eg, "oh hell just
include everything in com/myproject/*/*/*". Conversely, you do want to
make sure that you include the EJB classes and any dependent classes
that don't exist in libraries in your EJB's lib sub-tree.

This can be trial and error - you can get many iterations of
ClassNotFoundException before you can be sure that you have included
everything.

I'm interested in creating an eclipse plug-in, which will generate ant
pattern sets for including all classes that do not exist in libraries
within your EJB tree, but are required ( i.e are a dependency on your
initial EJB ).

What do you think?

 

[Sudsy]

I have an idea for a tool, but I thought I would just subject it you
all to see whether it is viable, if indeed useful.

What do you think?

I think you need to right-click on your project, select 'Properties'
then click on 'Java Build Path'. Check out the 'Default Output Folder'
in the lower right corner. I worked through the very excellent JBoss-
IDE tutorial and they suggested setting this to the bin subdirectory.
Makes packaging a breeze since only the class files corresponding to
your sources end up in that branch of the directory tree. No worries
about pollution with other classes you didn't write yourself. Just
included the appropriate jars in your packaging build.
So your tool would help how?

 

[Ben Jessel]

I think you need to right-click on your project, select 'Properties'
then click on 'Java Build Path'. Check out the 'Default Output Folder'
in the lower right corner.

</snip>


That's interesting. I'll have a play with that. Thanks for the tip

Just included the appropriate jars in your packaging build.
So your tool would help how?

</snip>

I guess it would help on projects where people cannot just use eclipse
to deploy their code, maybe on a shared development system where ANT
performs a code refresh and automatic build. ANT would be the only
viable option here, and each ant task and pattern-set would have to be
hand crafted for each EJB.

I just think it might be useful to have an eclipse->write patternset
for this EJB to ANT file option.