How to speed up Share development

alejandrogarcia — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:18:49 GMT

Hi all, I'm developing and performing some customization on Share. My IDE is Eclipse Juno and workspace is made up of the next elements:* alfresco web project* extensions Java project* share web projectBoth alfresco and share web projects are deployed in separate Tomcat instances, this way I can sli

Re: How to speed up Share development

alejandrogarcia — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 08:36:58 GMT

Well this is the solution that is working 100% as I expected. I came up with this after some answer I had to my question in Stackoverflow (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/14280186/how-to-speed-up-alfresco-share-development) and taking into account some posts I have read.

So basically I have the next Ant target which hot deploys the content of my Share extensions Java project:

    <!–
        Hot copy individual files into appropriate deployment folder (e.g. $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/share)
    –>
    <target name="hotdeploy-tomcat-share" depends="clean, prepare, build-jar" description="Hot copy individual files into appropriate deployment folder (e.g. $TOMCAT_HOME/webapps/share)">
       <echo message="Generating and deploying JAR file with custom configuration files" />
        <jar destfile="${dist.dir}/${jar.name}">
           <!– Only including configuration XML files such as share-config-custom.xml –>
           <fileset dir="${build.jar.dir}" includes="**/META-INF/*.xml" />
        </jar>
        <copy todir="${tomcat.share.deployment.path}/WEB-INF/lib">
            <fileset file="${dist.dir}/${jar.name}" />
        </copy>
       
        <echo message="Hot deploying Share files" />
        <copy todir="${tomcat.share.deployment.path}/WEB-INF/classes" includeEmptyDirs="false">
            <fileset dir="${build.jar.dir}">
                <patternset refid="hotdeploy-tomcat-patternset" />
            </fileset>
        </copy>
    </target>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

I believe it is also possible to hot deploy in the $TOMCAT_HOME/shared/ directory but I haven't tried it out yet.

The Java project I'm using for developing my extensions is this model project: http://code.google.com/p/share-extras/wiki/SampleProject. There is the full build script with the other targets required.

I'm also using this in my share-config-custom.xml:

       <!– Global config section –>
       <config replace="true">
          <flags>
             <!–
                Developer debugging setting to turn on DEBUG mode for client scripts in the browser
             –>
             <client-debug>true</client-debug>
    
             <!–
                LOGGING can always be toggled at runtime when in DEBUG mode (Ctrl, Ctrl, Shift, Shift).
                This flag automatically activates logging on page load.
             –>
             <client-debug-autologging>false</client-debug-autologging>
          </flags>
       </config>
       
       <config evaluator="string-compare" condition="WebFramework">
          <web-framework>
             <!– SpringSurf Autowire Runtime Settings –>
             <!– 
                  Developers can set mode to 'development' to disable; SpringSurf caches,
                  FreeMarker template caching and Rhino JavaScript compilation.
             –>
             <autowire>
                <!– Pick the mode: "production" or "development" –>
                <mode>development</mode>
             </autowire>
    
             <!– Allows extension modules with <auto-deploy> set to true to be automatically deployed –>
             <module-deployment>
                <mode>manual</mode>
                <enable-auto-deploy-modules>true</enable-auto-deploy-modules>
             </module-deployment>
          </web-framework>
       </config>‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍‍

The last XML snippet avoids to refresh webscripts after any change performed on an FTL page, for example.

I have also performed some tests with JRebel but after my experience I would say it doesn't helps a lot in Share development.

There is also interesting stuff in the next articles:

http://blogs.alfresco.com/wp/kevinr/2010/04/07/developer-tips-for-alfresco-share-33/
http://techblog.zabuchy.net/2012/debugging-javascript-in-alfresco/

Hope it helps others.

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How to speed up Share development

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