IntelliJ IDEA 11中的模块依赖性

Question

I have made two modules in IntelliJ; The first one contains business code (EJBs) and the second contains the presentation (JSF) etc. The presentation layer use some of the entities in the business module.

I have made an EAR artifact and added the WAR and JAR to it.

My question is: Is it necassary to add the business module as a dependency of the presentation module because aren't everything in a EAR visible for each other? And what is the difference between adding it as a module dependency and creating one EAR artifact where both modules are contained?

Answer 1

I think you want the dependency for code-assist and other references. For instance, and I know this isn't completely on-the-mark, I code with JBoss Seam, where "components" declared in the EJB container can be referenced from the web container (in my case, the Seam "components.xml" file found in WEB-INF).

Now, having visibility is one thing, but the actual dependency is taken care of by the fact that (as you rightly say) you're going to have both EJB (.jar) and Web (.war) artifacts within your .ear.

So, you avoid EJB stuff ending up in your Web Module by noting in IDEA that the EJB module should be "Provided" (not "Compile"), as set from the Scope column to the right of the name of the EJB module as seen in Project Structure > Modules > [your web module] > Dependencies.