run jetty without packaging the project using maven 2 plugin

Question

I'm trying to run jetty without building the whole project, but simply point jetty to a folder under the target folder. Reason behind doing this is that I wish to use jetty as a static content server while i build application for glassfish. i don't want to redeploy all the time when i make a little change to a css file, for example.

When I use maven jetty plugin and run jetty:run-exploded, it automatically builds the project including test and package. I wish to avoid that.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

About jetty:run-exploded, the documentation says:

This goal is used to assemble your webapp into an exploded war and automatically deploy it to Jetty.

...

• Invokes the execution of the lifecycle phase package prior to executing itself.

So the behavior you are describing is the normal behavior and it makes sense as jetty can't expect to find something under target if it hasn't been built and as the package phase could involve things like filtering (so filtering must occur).

That said, a few things might help (I'm not sure I understood clearly your goal so I'll mention several options). First option, you could use manual reload instead of automatic to avoid the automatic redeployment. About the manual mode, the documentation writes:

"Manual Reloading" As of Jetty 6.2.0pre0 a new feature to control webapp redeployment will be available. The configuration parameter is: <reload>[manual|automatic]</reload> When set to manual, no automatic scanning and redeployment of the webapp is done. Rather, the user can control when the webapp is reloaded by tapping the carriage return key. Set to automatic the scanning and automatic redeployment is performed at intervals controlled by the scanIntervalSeconds parameter. The choice of reloading paradigm can also be configured on the command line by use of the -Djetty.reload system parameter. For example: "mvn -Djetty.reload=manual jetty:run" would force manual reloading, regardless of what is configured in the project pom. Similarly: "mvn -Djetty.reload=automatic -Djetty.scanIntervalSeconds=10 jetty:run" will force automatic background reloading with a sweep every 10 seconds, regardless of the configuration in the project pom.

Another option would be to create another "empty" war modules (in the maven sense) to start jetty from and to use the jettyConfig optional parameter to set:

The location of a jetty.xml file that will be applied in addition to any plugin configuration parameters. You might use it if you have other webapps, handlers etc to be deployed, or you have other jetty objects that cannot be configured from the plugin.

This way, you should be able to deploy the static content from the other webapp. I don't think that the additional content will be "watched" but you can always combine it with the manual mode if required. Never tested though.