MyEclipse problems auto-deploying to tomcat

Posted on May 3, 2010 by squdgy

This morning I ran into a problem with MyEclipse which cost me a couple of hours, so I’m putting it here, in case this happens to me again.

I had broken a build/deployment, and in the process of fixing it, I removed my application deployment from within Eclipse, and then used a build script (outside of Eclipse) to generate and deploy a new version directly to tomcat. After I figured out what the problem was to fix that deployment, it was time to get back to autodeploy, so I could keep working. The problem was, the next time I tried to deploy from within Eclipse I just couldn’t.

The symptoms were: I would go into the Manage Deployments dialog box, choose my project, choose Add to pick a server (tomcat), and the “Exploded Archive (development mode)” setting would be set, but the Deploy Location textbox was empty and grayed out, and the Finish button was also grayed out.

Digging through the Eclipse error log, I found a NullPointerException on com.genuitec.eclipse.ast.deploy.core.DeploymentManager.computeDeploymentLocation.

After some searching of the MyEclipse forums, I saw that this was  a problem with the .mymetadata file in the project.  Somehow (?) this file had gotten deleted. Luckily, I had another, older version of this file in another branch of my project that I was able to copy into my project to fix things.

Posted in Eclipse, Java Development, Web Development | 2 Comments

Getting Ready for the Boston Azure Firestarter

Posted on April 26, 2010 by squdgy

I’ve been spending my day coding for Azure in preparation for a Firestarter event on May 8th. As a member of the Boston Azure User Group (bostonazure.org), that’s organizing the event, I’m getting myself psyched up and working on some potential code exercises. This event really can be a spark to Azure development. A lot of times, new technologies can be overwhelming, and if you can have some dedicated time and thoughtful, deliberate exercises to walk you through examples of how to use the technology (Hello World +), you can really build up momentum.

BTW, One of these deliberate exercises, which I used to get started, was the CodeProject.com Azure contest. I created an entry for the contest they held in February, but they’ve also run ones in March and now in April. There’s no coding required!, just some configuration; and I found this to be a great way to get a development environment running, learn a little about the Development Fabric, and to deploy a working application to Azure. Once you’re running, you can customize your app anyway you like.

I don’t have any code samples ready yet to post, but I will recommend a couple of other resources for folks who want to start with Azure development, resources that I’ve used a lot: The Azure Platform Training Kit and the MSDN Channel 9 Show, Cloud Cover.

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Introductions

Posted on March 30, 2010 by squdgy

Well, here it is. I’m finally keeping a web blog for my programming ideas, experiments, and solutions. It doesn’t really matter to me if I ever have an audience. I just want to get my ideas down in a common place and to use this as a repository of experiments and solutions. After all, I remember solving a really difficult problem in a really cool way 10 years ago, but that’s all I remember. If I had been blogging 10 years ago, I would have a record of what that was.

As an idea of what I’m most likely to post on…  Over the past 6 months I have worked on JSR-168 portlets, utilizing liferay, ExtJS, and EJSCharts; I’ve worked on a prototype of a GWT (Google Web Toolkit)/GXT rich internet application; I’ve worked on a Drupal website, writing php, jquery, and sql; I’ve been playing around with building location-aware apps on the Android mobile operating system; I’ve been experimenting with the Windows Azure SDK; and I’ve been looking into what it takes to use the Facebook and Twitter APIs. I’ve also been reading a lot (which you sort of have to do when you’re learning new technologies). Any of these or more is blog fodder.

It’s a great time to be a computer/web programmer.

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