Important Liferay IDE update for Eclipse 3.7.2

Greg Amerson
Greg Amerson
2 Minute Read

 

All Liferay IDE users that also use Eclipse Indigo SR2 (3.7.2) are encouraged to apply the latest update to Liferay IDE.
 
Steps for existing Liferay IDE users..
  1. Open Eclipse
  2. Make sure that the Liferay IDE updatesite is enabled: http://releases.liferay.com/tools/ide/eclipse/indigo/stable/
  3. Help > Check for Updates...
  4. Apply the update for the new 1.5.3 release

For new Liferay IDE installations...

This release fixes a regression in the New Liferay Project wizard for Eclipse 3.7.2 users where the default output folder for the java web project would cause the classes to not be deployed to Liferay Tomat server when deployed through Add/Remove Modules... wizard.  
 
Here is the full list of fixes for the 1.5.3 release:
 
 
Another important update in this release is an improvement to the Theme project development workflow.  Here is how Theme project development worked previously(<= 1.5.2):
 
  1. Create a new theme project
  2. Deploy to Liferay Tomcat Server through Add/Remove Modules dialog...
  3. Make a change in the _diffs folder under docroot/
  4. Liferay IDE detected this change and would invoke a "ant compile" in the background for the theme
    This would copy hundreds of files into the root of the docroot folder (to full compile the theme from the declared parent)
  5. Liferay IDE would publish the delta changes to the docroot of the project out into the webapps/ folder in Tomcat
  6. Tomcat would detect these changes and redeploy if it saw changes to descriptor files (web.xml)
  7. View the theme in the Portal
  8. Make another change to any _diffs resource
  9. "ant compile" is re-invoked and all of the changed files are deployed to tomcat webapps/ folder once again.
  10. Tomcat may redeploy and restart the context
  11. Refresh the browser to see the change to the theme.
 
This recompiling and redeploying would happen automatically for every change in the _diffs folder no matter how small.  The reason for this is that Liferay does not read the css files from the _diffs folder.  It reads it from the compiled files in the root webapp (docroot).  So to see the changes made in _diff you had to make sure the theme was re-compiled to copy the changes from _diffs out to the parent docroot.  This caused lots of problems for tomcat as it had to constantly redeploying and restart the theme context if it saw changes to that many files, which led to instability in the development process.
 
Now lets look at what happens with Theme projects in latest version of Liferay IDE (1.5.3).
 
  1. Create a new theme project
  2. During the creation of the project the theme is pre-compiled so it doesn't wait on the auto-compile to happen from first change to _diffs
  3. Deploy to Liferay Tomcat Server through Add/Remove Modules dialog...
  4. View the theme in the Portal
  5. Now when changes are made to _diffs/**/* resource, Liferay IDE detects this change and just copies the single small delta change into the docroot parent.
  6. Auto-publish event is triggered for the Liferay Tomcat server and this same small delta update is made to the theme published in the webapps/ folder in tomcat.  Tomcat does not redeploy or restart the context single only a small change (single css or tempalte file) was modified.
  7. Refresh the page in the browser to see the update in the portal
 
This should be a much improved development experience for Theme developers with Liferay IDE (or Developer Studio).  We have more improvements for Theme developers planned for the upcoming 1.6/2.0 release, so now is a good time to head over to the Liferay IDE forums to make a feature enhancement suggestion or report issues found with the latest 1.5.3 release.
 
Thanks everyone.
Page Comments
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Gregory Amerson
13 Years Ago
Hi Scott,

Which part were you refering to, the "important update because of regression" or the improvement to theme development workflow?
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Gregory Amerson Gregory Amerson
13 Years Ago
So just to answer both questions. Developer Studio does not need to update to fix the regression but they would need to update to get the improved theme development experience.

I plan on releasing a new update to Developer Studio this week (1.5.3) for customers via the customer portal and you could apply that update to get the improved theme development behavior.
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Scott Rabon Gregory Amerson
13 Years Ago
Thanks Greg for the answers. I was referring to the important update because of regressions. I'll get the update when it's released this week. I also noticed a new menu option under the Help menu "Update Liferay Developer Studio ...". In the popup window there's a link to the customer portal. But when I click it and it opens my browser, I get an error on the Liferay site that states:

The requested resource was not found.
http://www.liferay.com/group/customer/downloads/dev-studio
Is that broken or happening because the latest update hasn't been released yet?
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