SpringIDE and Eclipse Galileo 3.5

Question

Hello, good fellas. I have another very basic question that I need help with.

I wanted to try out the great Seam Framework, and I managed to add the JBoss Tools plug-ins to my copy of Eclipse Galileo 3.5. After spending some time using Seam, I decided I wanted to try the Spring Framework.

My question is: Apart from adding SpringIDE to Eclipse Galileo 3.5, are they any other packages or plug-ins I need to add before I can create a Spring project? Since Seam uses Spring (please correct me if I'm wrong), are the Spring libraries already included? Also, is there anything I should be aware of when using Eclipse Galileo with regards to using Spring and Maven?

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you are going to use maven for your WAR file builds you should be adding your dependencies inside of the pom.xml file. You shouldn't be worried about what eclipse has built in. Galileo also has JSF capability built in. You can create JSF pages without having to download any jars or add anything to your pom file. However, if you didn't add it to you pom then when you ran your mvn clean install command you get a WAR file that didn't work.

Answer 2

SpringIDE is not a mandatory requirement for using the spring framework. All you need to use the spring framework in a project is to add spring.jar as a dependency. We use spring all the time and don't use SpringIDE.

It stands to reason that if you seam uses spring then the spring jars should already be there. Won't hurt to add them again, especially if you add the source as well.

With regards to maven, ditto. Maven and Eclipse should co-exist okay.

Answer 3

Spring IDE is not required to use Spring, so just import the Spring jars. If you are using maven, you should add those dependencies to your pom rather than import them directly.

Seam does not use Spring (they are competitors).

Spring IDE basically gives you auto-complete in the xml files, validates the xml files at compile time rather than run time, and (when using Spring AOP) gives you some nice icons in the code editor's 'gutter' to show join points.

SpringSource Tool Suite (which is free) is a souped-up Spring IDE with more features. It's a fully-branded version of Eclipse (meaning, different splash screen and different icon than Eclipse).