Transitive project dependencies in Eclipse WTP

Question

I've created a bunch of projects in Eclipse 3.7.2. Let's give some of them a name:

W (a Dynamic Web Project)
A (some library)
B (a library with lots of common stuff, that is used by other projects too)

Project A depends on project B, so B is in A's build path. Project W depends on project A so I've added A as Deployment Assembly in W.

When I export a WAR from within Eclipse only the JAR file for A gets added to WEB-INF/lib. Eclipse shows the following warning:

Classpath entry /B will not be exported or published. Runtime ClassNotFoundExceptions may result.

The warning is correct. I get a ClassNotFoundExceptions at runtime. Of course Eclipse provides a Quick fix for the warning which is "Mark the associated raw classpath entry as publish/export dependency". However, this doesn't fix my problem. B still doesn't get deployed with W.

I tried manually adding B as Deployment Assembly in A . That includes the B.jar within A.jar which isn't really what I want and I still get the ClassNotFoundExceptions.

The only thing that works is manually adding B as Deployment Assembly in W. Eclipse still shows the warning from above, but the runtime exceptions are gone.

Am I missing something or is this really the only way to get this working?

are you using m2eclipse plugin? are you using maven build to generate the war? — Diego Lins de Freitas, Jun 13 '12 at 11:35
Currently I'm not using Maven to build the war. That's one of the things I'd like to do in the future. Until then I'm building the war with Eclipse and it's export function. — Gerhard Schlager, Jun 13 '12 at 12:12
In A's build path configuration, try setting B as "exported" — miniBill, Jun 13 '12 at 12:16
Yes, as I stated in my question, manually adding `B.jar` as Deployment Assembly in W (which puts it into `WEB_INF/lib`) works. However, that somehow defeats the purpose of defining project dependencies (and marking them as exported) in the first place. — Gerhard Schlager, Jun 13 '12 at 17:46

Eugene Kuleshov · Accepted Answer · 2012-06-13T18:34:19.387

In order to make Eclipse's "Export / Web / WAR File" work, you have to make your project "b" to appear in the "Web App Libraries" container.

You can edit deployment configuration using Deployment Assembly page in the project properties and add your project "b" in there:

deployment assembly

Alternatively, you can open configuration file at /w/.settings/org.eclipse.wst.common.component and add reference to project "b" manually:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project-modules id="moduleCoreId" project-version="1.5.0">
    <wb-module deploy-name="w">
        <wb-resource deploy-path="/" source-path="/WebContent" tag="defaultRootSource"/>
        <wb-resource deploy-path="/WEB-INF/classes" source-path="/src"/>
        <dependent-module archiveName="a.jar" deploy-path="/WEB-INF/lib" handle="module:/resource/a/a">
            <dependency-type>uses</dependency-type>
        </dependent-module>
        <dependent-module archiveName="b.jar" deploy-path="/WEB-INF/lib" handle="module:/resource/b/b">
            <dependency-type>uses</dependency-type>
        </dependent-module>
        <property name="context-root" value="w"/>
        <property name="java-output-path" value="/w/build/classes"/>
    </wb-module>
</project-modules>

Once it is done, you'll see project "b" in the "Web App Libraries" classpath container and export to WAR file will also add b.jar into WEB-INF/lib.

Transitive project dependencies in Eclipse WTP

1 Answers1