Re: GWT, Java 17, jakarta.servlet, Eclipse, GWT plugin

> If using maven... [I'm not]... If not, please give us more detail about what you are using (or intend to use).

After further investigation, much of my issues around this seem to be that the. appropriate java command to run the web app (or Jetty itself) is not being assembled correctly by either Eclipse, the GWT plugin, or both.  There are various options that are needed and are not properly set.  That said, even if I do/can get that working, I don't think that's the right approach.  As you're going to deprecate the embedded Jetty server, I should do whatever is needed there to run my own external server(s).  That's what's unclear to me.  There are ancient references to it in the documentation at gwt.project.org, but I'm unclear on what is really needed.  Do I need to set up and run a code server with my own Jetty or Tomcat local installation?  If so, how is that set up?  Or do I need to run my own app server (again, either Jetty or Tomcat).  The web app setup is obvious (I think... or are there special runtime parameters to direct it to the proper code server port?).  Forgive my ignorance on this, but if this is the path forward for GWT in general, I'd really like to see some clear documentation on how to set this up or at least what it is going to look like (in general, no specifics, obviously it should involve thinking and work on my part). Last note: I am assuming the code server will be easier to get working with Java 17 modules because it will (in my case) have less jar dependencies, as it only needs them for shared and client code.  That said... I might need to run both externally to get it all sorted out.  Again, my own thinking on this isn't that clear because I'm not in the weeds enough on what the plugin is really doing and how things work under the hood.

To give a shorter, more direct answer: I want to develop code in Eclipse in Java 17, and be able to run the code server and web app any way possible, so that GWT code compiles/recompiles as needed, and the web app can be accessed in the browser, and I can do iterative test-code-test-code development on a daily basis.

Traditionally GWT SDK only had the class com.google.gwt.dev.DevMode. It is responsible to launch classic dev mode (the one that does require an obsolete browser plugin) or SuperDevMode together with an embedded servlet container, by default Jetty. SuperDevMode is implemented in class com.google.gwt.dev.codeserver.CodeServer and DevMode basically calls this class if you request it to launch SuperDevMode (which is the default behavior). Class DevMode has a parameter "-noserver" which skips starting Jetty and assumes you have your own server and deployment running. Because we advocate running your own servlet container, e.g. Jetty/Tomcat/..., it is enough to just launch CodeServer yourself. However you could also continue to use class DevMode and replace the embedded Jetty with your own implementation using DevMode -server your.impl.of.ServletContainerLauncher. Your own implementation could then be based on Jetty 12 for example (and possibly jakarta)

Personally I use Gradle and have a task that just launches CodeServer by executing a command line. I am pretty sure you could also write a similar ANT task using your current ANT setup. The command line looks like 

com.google.gwt.dev.codeserver.CodeServer -sourceLevel 11 -strict -failOnError - bindAddress 0.0.0.0 -port 9876 -style PRETTY -XmethodNameDisplayMode ABBREVIATED -workDir /client-project/build/gwt/work -launcherDir /client-project/build/gwt/war -src /shared-project/src/main/java -src /shared-project/src/main/resources com.example.MyGwtModule

The classpath should contain gwt-user/gwt-dev/gwt-codeserver, all compile-time dependencies you need for GWT compilation as well as classes + sources + resources related to your GWT UI and DTOs. You would need to use ANT fileset/dirset/files to include/exclude only the files of your single project that are relevant for GWT compilation. Once you have that set of files figured out you can run GWT CodeServer in isolation via ANT with its own GWT focused classpath and you should not have any trouble with other dependencies that you need on the server only.

Once you have that running, you need to decide how you want to run a servlet container. Personaly I use Docker + docker-compose + Jetty image + shell script.

 

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