Refreshing WEB-INF/lib in Google App Engine (with Eclipse)

Question

I've created a new Google App Engine project within Eclipse. I copied several JARs that I need for my application into the WEB-INF/lib directory, and add them to the build path. I make some random calls to these JARs from within the handler, deploy, and everything works fine.

However, if I then change one of the JARs outside the project, and copy the new version to WEB-INF/lib (with the same name) and re-deploy, it doesn't seem to be sending the new JAR; everything is still linking to the old one even though it's not even in my WEB-INF/lib anymore. I'm guessing it's being cached by the server or Eclipse is not even realizing something has changed in order to upload the new version.

If I just create a new project with the new JAR, everything is fine again (until I have to make another change...) but of course I don't want to have to create a new project for every change to a dependency I make.

My question is, how can I make GAE re-upload all the JARs I have from within Eclipse?

Thanks in advance, guys :) -Adrian

Answer 1

I seem to have found a workaround to my problem -- bumping the version number seems to tell Eclipse to repackage the WAR file and resend everything.

However, it's still not an ideal solution, so I'll be glad to hear any better ways from you guys :)