Enhancing seam-gen to support multiple projects

[modoc]

I am usually work on more than one project at a time. A couple existing applications in maintenance mode, a couple projects under development, and maybe a project or two to test something out in. Since seam-gen does not support that out of the box, and in fact I've seen people suggest that you should have a separate Seam download/installation for each project you want to use seam-gen with, I've made a couple of small changes to seam-gen which support setting up, creating, and working with, multiple projects. You can run 'seam setup' to setup project1, then run 'seam project1 new-project' to create the project, then run 'seam setup' to setup project2, then run 'seam project1 new-form' to create a new form in project1, then run 'seam project2 new-project', and so on.

Anyhow, I think it is very useful, although it's currently missing the enhanced Windows seam.bat (as I don't have a Windows machine to test it on), and an ant task to list the available project (which is a nice to have).

I'd like to get the opinions of the group, and ask how I would go about getting my changes, or at least the feature, moved into the product.

You can check out all the details, edits, patch files, etc.. here:

http://www.digitalsanctuary.com/tech-blog/archives/28

Thanks!

-- Devon

[atao]

An other way would be:
- when you create a new project, copy the build.properties inside it
- add in the build.xml of the project targets "generate-entity" ... linked
to the associated targets in seam-gen/build.xml

You can call these targets from the project under Eclipse.

Then each project is fully independent.

[modoc]

Yes, that would work as well. You'd have to modify the seam-gen templates a bit to make that work, but it should be doable.

Either approach: is this something that would make a good feature as part of seam-gen? If so, how do we submit the changes?

[atao]

You'd have to modify the seam-gen templates

seam-gen/build-scripts/build.xml and seam-gen/build.xml.

Other?

[matt.drees]

I agree, something like this would be handy. I think I like atao's approach a little more.
I've copy/pasted the copy-lib target into my project to update the lib dir when cvs changes, and this has worked well. If the target came built-in, that'd be great.

[modoc]

I'm going to play with atao's approach now. If I get something working, I'll post it up for everyone.

Devon

[atao]

Here is a try i did some time ago with "generate-entities".
The idea is to avoid to duplicate the same code in seam-gen/build.xml and in {project_home}/build.xml.

It should work for any other target.

In the seam-gen/build-scripts/build.xml, add:

 <target name="generate-entities"
 description="Reverse engineer entities from the database">

 <ant dir="${seam.home}/seam-gen" target="generate-entities" inheritall="false">
 <property name="project.name" value="${project.name}"/>
 <property file="${basedir}/build.properties"/>
 <property file="${basedir}/seam-gen.properties"/>
 </ant>

 </target>

the variable seam.home must be defined in {project_home}/build.properties
in seam-gen/build-scripts/build.properties, add:

seam.home = @seamHome@

and in seam-gen/build.xml, in filterset "project", add:

 <filter token="seamHome" value="${basedir}/.." />

the seam-gen/build.properties is copied in {project_home}/seam-gen.properties
in seam-gen/build.xml, in target "file-copy", add:

 <copy tofile="${project.home}/seam-gen.properties"
 file="${basedir}/build.properties">
 <filterset refid="project"/>
 </copy>

[modoc]

atao: haha, I was just drafting my reply when you posted your comment:) Well, my solution is almost identical to yours:) It works very well, thank you very much for the idea!

I have the full write-up and modified files here:

http://www.digitalsanctuary.com/tech-blog/java/jboss/seam/seam-gen-and-multiple-projects-part-two.html

If anyone is interested.

I'd love to see this get rolled into the main seam product.

Devon

[modoc]

http://www.digitalsanctuary.com/tech-blog/java/jboss/seam/seam-gen-and-multiple-projects-part-two.html

Sorry, I wish I could edit previous comments.

[atao]

Modoc,

Will you create a new Jira entry?

[modoc]

Sure will!

[modoc]

http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBSEAM-1824