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Bug 182680

Summary:	Improve usability of command line build without shared server
Product:	javaee	Reporter:	Petr Jiricka <pjiricka>
Component:	Web Project	Assignee:	David Konecny <dkonecny>
Status:	RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Severity:	normal	CC:	phejl
Priority:	P3	Keywords:	USABILITY
Version:	6.x
Hardware:	All
OS:	All
Issue Type:	DEFECT	Exception Reporter:

Description Petr Jiricka 2010-03-24 15:01:04 UTC

1. Create a new Java EE 6 web project - specify that libraries should be shared, and server jars should NOT be shared
2. private.properties was created, containing 5 classpath-related properties:
j2ee.platform.classpath=...
j2ee.platform.embeddableejb.classpath=...
j2ee.platform.wsgen.classpath=...
j2ee.platform.wsimport.classpath=...
j2ee.platform.wsit.classpath=...
3. Delete the private directory, which emulates sharing with other users through VCS.
4. Run Ant from the command line. The build fails with the following message:

------
/Users/petrjiricka/NetBeansProjects/WebApplication20/nbproject/build-impl.xml:226: The Java EE server classpath is not correctly set up. Your active server type is gfv3ee6.
Either open the project in the IDE and assign the server or setup the server classpath manually.
For example like this:
ant -Duser.properties.file=<path_to_property_file> (where you put the property "j2ee.platform.classpath" in a .properties file)
or ant -Dj2ee.platform.classpath=<server_classpath> (where no properties file is used)
------

This message is somewhat useful, but it is still very, very hard to set up the path manually, as the user does not know what the specify as the value of the j2ee.platform.classpath property. Moreover, the message explains only how to set this one property, but not the other properties. So the only viable option is to open the project in NetBeans, which may be impractical in case I want to e.g. set up a Hudson build.

It would be better and more usable if the user was requested to just specify the location of the server installation, and all the other paths were derived from this.

Comment 1 Petr Jiricka 2010-04-22 14:35:41 UTC

Looks like this is mostly fixed by David's changes for bug 180766 - thanks a lot!

Just a couple minor issues I noticed:
1. For GlassFish, the path to server installation includes the 'glassfish' subdirectory of the installation dir, which could be slightly confusing
2. After the following steps:
- create a web project with shared libs without shared server
- shut down the IDE, delete nbproject/private, restart the IDE
=> the j2ee.platform.classpath property is written into private.properties, not project.properties as expected

Comment 2 David Konecny 2010-11-08 02:21:28 UTC

I think both of these problems should be resolved now. Re #1 - the path returned by server plug-in is used.