Some years ago I was using Fatclipse for the development of a large italian government web site. I liked Fatclipse because using it I was able to develop with Eclipse (with nice completion for JSP tag and Java method ). Fatclipse had also a very nice feature as well: immediate deployment of JSP. Just hitting "save" was enough to get the code immediately deployed on ContentServer.
When time passes, things change. Now I am developing a large UK government web site but Fatclipse is virtually dead (I was unable to run in with the latest 7.5.x Content Server) and since I work on a Mac I do not have the luxury of using ContentServer Explorer (well actually I want to avoid the punishment of having to use it :D, but this is another story). Furthermore the new CSDT (not yet tried acutally) requires he 7.6 (and I don't have it in my current project).
In the meanwhile I developed (for my own use) FatStart, that is basically a javascript installer for Content Server that can install elements; I extended to support XMLPost to upload the whole content model.
I developed FatStart as a packaging tool, to release a website called FatPhone. But I found to be useful as a development tools, so for my latest projects I dropped CSE (finally! :)) and I am developing using FatStart on a Mac… And I am happy.
Well, almost. FatStart gives me the freedom to develop on my Mac machine, allows code sharing with other developer using a version control system. But since it is a Javascript based installer, I had to "deploy" manually each template or cselement after a change, manually, with the browser. I just need to click the "install" button, but it still very tedious. Not very different from what you do with CSE, but tedious nonetheless. Every time I change something, before seeing the result I have to go on the Javascript installer, LOCATE the changed file, and deploy it.
It is a small step but annoying enough because it has to be done after every change, and I was missing the simplicity of Faclipse: just saving was enough to upload the changes code to FatWire… But suddenly I realized I could have also this with FatStart!
I had just write some Java code that monitors jsp files for changes, and when it finds a changed file, upload it automatically. So one night, when I was too bored to write code for others, I decided to write code for myself and I extended FatStart adding this feature. Well, I had some code lurking in a forgotten folder that was already doing the upload of something to a CSElement.
Once completed, I commited, pushed on GitHub and it is now on FatStart v0.3 that I released today. You still have to install everything with FatStart as usual at the beginning. But now you can also launch the FatStart continuos deployer executing the script "deploy.bat" (or deploy.sh).
Well, the first time you have to change the config.prp to match your configuration, just in case you are not using a jumpstart in localhost listening in port 8080 or username and password are not standard.
The deployer will deploy all the elements. Note: it is not a complete deployer (although in the future could be), it just deploys ELEMENTS, not assets. So if you haven't created the Template and CSElements, you won't see it in you site. You can see the elements in the element catalog with CSE.
Also note that in current implementation it deploys ALL the jsp (files with extension .jspf) that it can find under folders CSElement and Template (FatStart deploys only the elements that are listed in the install.html). So be careful, you could overwrite something just dropping the wrong file in the directory.
After the first deployment, the deployer keeps running and monitor work directories. When it finds a changed file (a file whose last modification date has changed since its previous visit) it redeploys the file immediately.
Keeping the deployer up and running while you code has the net effect you can now edit the jsp with Eclipse and when you save it, within one second the file is deployed in ContentServer . An effect very similar to what I was having with FatClipse: just saving was enough to upload the file in Fatwire.
PS of course, if you don't want the extra step of having to clean the cache, remember to put the property "cs.nocache=true" in your futuretense.ini.
PPS. If you also have to code an URL assembler, a filter or other java code, add JRebel to your jump start kit, and you can have a complete no-deploy environment where you can change you Java code, your JSP code and get the result deployed with no intervention. Almost as luxurious as using PHP in the first place! Ok I am kidding, PHP is not that great as a programming language but it has some advantages... well it had I should say now...
