[ajug-members] Java EE default project layout

[Burr Sutter]

The fact that every IDE seems to have its own unique way of handling project
structure (though I understand Netbeans at least gives you the Ant script
needed to build manually) seems to be something that should be addressed.
Ideally my project should be fairly portable between Ant+Command Line,
Netbeans and Eclipse.  Granted, BEA, Oracle and IBM will add their own
special sauce but it would be really nice to have a standard/open source
solution to this.

I've often looking at things from the "newbie" standpoint and what should I
tell the folks who are fairly new to Java.  At the moment, picking up
MyEclipse seems to be the best answer for building basic web applications on
an app server from what I can see. Low cost, large marketshare on its own,
based on the marketshare leading Eclipse therefore knowlege is transferable
to your next position as a developer.

The fact that every new project startup (just after the team members have
been screened, interviewed and hired) incurs a 1 to 2 week ramp up on things
like a standardized build process, folder/file layout, check-in/out,
process/procedures and whatever the basic framework is (e.g. Struts,
Spring+Hibernate, JSF+EJB, etc) just hurts.

Great discussion so far!  Thanks Ron!

Burr


On 2/5/06, Ron Cordell <ron.cordell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I inherited a project that was built with Maven 1.0.2, and there were a
> lot of things to like about it. Everything for the project, documentation,
> building jars, wars, ears and such can be handled with Maven. But I ripped
> out Maven and replaced it with Ant. Many people might think that this is a
> step backwards, and I'd have to agree. But the problem with Maven 1.x was
> that it takes too long to make changes to it because it's so hard to
> understand. Most things Maven does is implicit, rather than explicit like
> Ant. Maven relies completely on plugins, but each plugin has idiosyncrasies
> that result in slight different behavior from plugin to plugin. The promise
> of Maven is clear, especially on larger projects where there are many
> inter-related sub-projects that can be built in tandem. But for a simple to
> medium level project, I came to the conclusion that it was too expensive to
> maintain and modify Maven.
>
> Outside Maven, there are components and IDE plugins that also want to
> dictate project structure. I'm thinking of things like MyEclipseIDE, which
> wants your project to be set up in a specific way. I haven't looked at
> recent releases of MyEclipseIDE, but there wasn't any way to map there
> expected structure to your physical directory layout, much like NetBeans
> allows you to do with basic java projects. These complicate things quite a
> bit and reduce the number of options in some ways.
>
> I'm looking foward to reading some of the articles and info people have
> put forward on this thread as they look quite interesting.
>
> -Ron Cordell
>
>
>
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