JSF2 and Maven - hot deploy?

Question

Hi all,

I'm on a project involving a JSF 2.0 frontend. The project is using Maven as the build tool, with a few modules for the different layers of the system. One of which is a WAR module, which is the deployment artifact.

What I would like is to have a nice development process, which is similar to that of using Netbean's Web Project for development. That is, I click save, things are hot deployed (incrementally) to Glassfish, and I just refresh/retry my page to see the effect.

Is it possible to do this? What is the best method you've tried with Maven and JSF2?

I'm hoping to use Netbeans, but Eclipse is also a possibility. Tomcat and JBoss are the targeted servlet engines (versions that support JSF 2).

Thanks,

James

Answer 1

Did you try to deploy and run your maven WAR project on GlassFish v3 under NetBeans 6.7+ (or, even better, NetBeans 6.8)? Incremental hot deployment should just work. Eclipse 3.5+ and GlassFish v3 is also an option, just install the appropriate WTP server adapter.

In both cases, I'd use GlassFish because the auto-deploy of all Java EE and static artifacts just works (as mentioned) and because it can maintain stateful sessions across redeployments.

In other words, GlassFish is a nice container for Java EE development.