Menu icons in eclipse linux

This very tiny issue in the linux version of Eclipse has bugged me for a couple of years. Despite the bug reports and suggested corrections I have not been able to get it to work. But today I somehow managed to figure it out. And the solution is very simple.

dconf write /org/gnome/desktop/interface/menus-have-icons true

Surefire plugin wont run my JUnit tests!

I spent way to much time on this trivial issue to not write it down. I ran into an issue where my unit tests (JUnit 4) were running fine in Eclipse but not by the maven surefire plugin.

Google served up numerous solutions to my problem but it didn't help me. My problem was much simpler. Eclipse will run any test in any class where the method is annotated with @Test. This does not apply to surefire. If the class is not named Test, surefire will not even look for tests in it. Hence, in maven projects, we should always name test classes that way.

Adjusting maven to the eclipse GAE project

As I mentioned in my previous post. The war directory location in the eclipse project cannot be changed, the GAE plugin wont understand this. Instead we have to adapt maven to this.

First off, enable maven for the project. Just create the pom.xml with some basic content.

<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" schemalocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
   <modelversion>4.0.0</modelversion>
   <groupid>com.appspot</groupid>
   <artifactid>maven</artifactid>
   <packaging>war</packaging>
   <name>maven</name>
   <version>0.0.1-SNAPSHOT</version>
</project>

Now, change the war directory in maven by adding a plugin configuration for maven war plugin and set the war source directory.

<build>
   <plugins>
      <plugin>
         <groupid>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupid>
         <artifactid>maven-war-plugin</artifactid>
         <version>2.0</version>
         <configuration>
            <warSourceDirectory>${basedir}/war</warSourceDirectory>
         </configuration>
      </plugin>
   </plugins>
</build>

After this you can update your project configuration from maven and it'll work out pretty well. However, eclipse will display an error about the target directory is not corret. Just click quickfix and then accept the change and it is corrected.

To be able to run the bundled jetty server via the eclipse plugin, you must run mvn war:inplace to add the maven managed libraries to the WEB-INF/lib directory.

Adjusting GAE eclipse plugin for maven

The last months, I've been working in a application maintenance team. Yes I know, it sucks. But since I met with the CEO of the company I work for (which happens to be in the top 10 worldwide) he inspired me that working with maintenance is vital to understanding how to write maintainable applications in the future. He admitted that most people dislike it, but it is also what most developers do in the industry.

Even worse, I'm maintaining Microßoft-based applications. C#, VB, MSSQL. That shit. Throw in a little oracle as well to top it of.

So now, I'm looking at trying out something modern on my spare time. GAE (Google App Engine) released java support some time ago and I managed to get an account. I strongly like eclipse and the ease of deploying applications from it. However, the applications are not structured to my liking, which is the maven convention, and I want them all to look the same, and build the same way. In the name of maintainability. What I want to do basically, is to create a project for app engine, with the maven structure and add some of the eclipse stuff to it.

First, create a new GAE project using the eclipse plugin. You now have a project with some basic directories and files. Just hit deploy to send it the GAE and get the Hello World servlet up.

Next, we have to move and separate source and resource directories. This is no problem whatsoever. Just separate the resource and java files to src/main/resources and src/main/java respectively.

The war directory cannot be moved, as of now. So we'll have to leave it where it is (sucks).

Next. I want a faceted project with the dynamic web module (just because other java projects are like this). To enable the facet, just go into project properties and enable the java facet with version 1.6 and then the dynamic web module facet. Watch out! A notification with be displayed to configure the facet, you have the click it and change the web content directory, or you'll have a nice WebContent directory to deal with.

Most facet setting cannot be changed from Eclipse. You can however do this yourself.

If you missed out changing the war directory, edit .settings/org.eclipse.wst.common.component and set wb-resource::source-path to /war.
The web module version is default set to 2.4, if you need to change this, edit the file .settings/org.eclipse.wst.common.project.facet.core.xml

Those two files can be added to source control as well to get people started faster (maintenance thinking again).