Local development setup

Question

I'm currently looking into what better ways there are for deploying/setting up webapps locally after code changes and database changes.

So far I've seen the following tools/ways come by, and attempted each of them:

1. ANT build target that compiles, makes a jar, a war file and deploys that to the tomcat folder
2. Gradle build in combination with the tomcat plugin, which already does a bit of a better job than option #1
3. Good ol' fashioned command line
4. Setup run configuration within Intellij to do the deployment for you
5. Write shell script and call this via command line (haven't tried this)

To be honest I'm not finding each of these the ideal solution. I find option #4 the easiest as it allows me to, via a short-cut, easily deploy my changes and continue. This has however not given me an option for database changes yet, probably just me that missed it.

My question is mainly what tools/ways are you guys using in order to achieve an easy and maintainable development environment? What considerations come with those?

Answer 1

Well, let me tell you what I do for local web app setup.

In your favorite IDE(eclipse in my case) i'll configure the application server plugin(tomcat or webpshere) from Eclipse marketplace.

This setup will help to auto publish code changes to the server whenever I make a change in the application. I use Maven build tool for the application packaging. However I'm not sure about the database side.

Answer 2

For the people that were wondering how I ended up doing and found the best to work for me.

I currently have configured my IntelliJ IDE in such a way that the tomcat instance is linked and can be properly controlled and deployed, including debug, from within IntelliJ itself. This allows me to, via an easy shortcut, instantly populate any resources changes (css, javascript, front end) or redeploy or even restart the server. Especially with a small application this works very well.

It is yet to be determined whether this would still work with a multi-module setup and a larger project size.

Should you want more information on how this configuration can be achieved, feel free to send me a direct message.