Maven and Eclipse RCP aka taking a trip to hell

Trying to get Maven and Eclipse RCP to work together to produce a build has been a complete nightmare. A member of my team spent a week trying to accomplish this feat and the end result has been hindering development ever since. Every time the plugin dependencies change, which in a young project is quite often, we're forced to update number of files by hand to accommodate the build process, which is fairly complex so that only one person on the team really knows what the hell is going on. I wouldn't believe how difficult something like building an RCP app with Maven can be, if I didn't live through it. Very frustrating stuff. Especially given that we're all quite happy with the way the actual RCP application has turned out.

Maven ...

It seems one cannot get away from Maven now a days. In my current job as well as in my new job (which I start in a few days) we'll be using Maven to build and manage projects.
While Maven is quite nice in theory the plug-ins for it leave much to be desired in many cases. So without further delay here is a quote of the day by a colleague of mine:

"I hate Maven and the open source community!"

This made me laugh out since we use (pretty much exclusively) open source tools and software (NetBeans, Eclipse, GlassFish etc.) to build and run the business. But nevertheless, after a few days of hell trying to implement release management using a combination of Maven and Hudson plug-ins, universal hatred is what we have :)

A brush with Eclipse RCP

In my current job I seem to do quite a bit of UI work. The nice thing is that since my company is a start-up, the possibilities (in terms of technology at least) are unlimited. In the last year I've written GUIs using C# & WPF, Swing, and JavaFX. This time we were looking to create a 'system monitoring application' which should be able to present different types of information:

• Tables
• Graphs
• Charts
• Trees
• etc...
  

The application also had to be easily extensible. While I personally have a fair amount of experience in GUI development, my two junior colleagues have done much less UI work. So it was just as important that the technology we choose has a gentle learning curve. Given a 4 week sprint we don't have much time to 'waste'. I have evaluated our options:

• JavaFx: low level, lack of tools and out of box components
• Swing: low level, good tools
• SWT: low level
• NetBeans platform: have personal experience
• Eclipse RCP: unknown
  

It was clear that given the extensibility requirement we needed a platform. It came down to a choice between NetBeans Platform and Eclipse RCP. In the end I chose Eclipse RCP because I was able to step through this tutorial with complete ease and I felt that even though I have experience with the NetBeans platform my team mates would be faster in picking up the Eclipse RCP way of doing things.

Now, a month later, I have to say that I believe that my decision was the right one. After 3 days of tutorials and reading we were ready to go. Ultimately we have created a UI which is modular (with multiple self contained plugins), looks and feels the way our client expects, and will be easy to extend. In addition, majority of the actual UI work (using JFace, SWT, databinding, Eclipse RCP APIs) was done by my colleagues while I focused on the data models.

While I would take the NetBeans IDE over the Eclipse IDE for most things I am quite happy with the way our RCP based project turned out given the requirements.

Sending GlassFish java.util log records to Chainsaw - no problemo

To send Java log records to from GlassFish to chainsaw we need to first translate the LogRecords (from java.util.logging) to LoggingEvents (used byt the log4j framework and accepted by chainsaw). Then also need to publish the resulting LoggingEvents to Chainsaw over a socket.

Here is how I do it:

* Copy ChainsawHandler.jar and log4j.jar into GLASSFISH_HOME/domains/domain1/lib/ext

* In Glassfish admin web console under: Application Server/Logging/General/Log Handler enter:

au.com.horseshoelane.logging.HSLChainsawLogHandler

* In Glassfish admin web console under: Application Server/JVM Settings/JVM Options/ add a new JVM Option:

-DchainsawPort=4447

this is the port to which Chainsaw clients can connect

* Restart GlassFish

* Configure a new SocketHubReceiver in Chainsaw that will connect to the chainsawPort

In case you are curious how it works or want to add functionality or fix a bug here is the source.

I would like to thank my current employer HSL for allowing me to publish this work - which they have sponsored in the form of my paycheck :)

JavaFX + WebStart + Web Services + GlassFish = One cool client app

In this post I will give an overview of the architecture that I've used to supply a connected thick (JavaFX) client application to a customer.

Here is the scenario: our company has an important customer who wishes to access and view some real-time data related to their business.

After some thought we've decided that the ideal platform for the client app is JavaFX (eye candy), the client deployment method is WebStart and we'll provide the data to the client via a SOAP Web Service. Easier said than done it turns out :)

There are a few issues with this set-up.

CLIENT:
The JavaFX client app can be written without major problems (see my previous posts about my beef with JavaFX tools) but I've found it best to create separate Java module to handle the WS communication. This is also useful since Maven doesn't seem to be able to build mixed source trees. Therefor the client app is composed of two separate JARs:
- Java library to handle WS client code generation and some utilities that are easier written in Java
- JavaFX GUI client that depends on the Java library

SERVER:
Simple enough Web Service deployed on GlassFish v2.1 JavaEE 5. Nothing special to note here.

DEPLOYMENT:
This was one of the trickiest parts. Since we have a number of servers (dev, test, stage, production, etc.) and we want a client which is downloaded from a specific server to connect to the WebService running on that same server. This we achieved by using a servlet to dynamically generate the JNLP file for the WebStart deployment. The servlet plugs the correct values into the JNLP for two things:
- where the client jars are located (i.e. codebase)
- a run-time property for the client specifying the WS location
The client (once launched) uses the WS location property to connect to the correct web service.
The servlet gets this information from system properties which can be easily set using the GlassFish web admin console. This means that we compile the code once and deploy it to any GlassFish server and all works well as long as we don't forget to add the two properties to the server.

More JavaFX impressions

So I have been using JavaFX for about 2 weeks now. I am working on commercial application for a client and now that I am more familiar with both tools and language I think it's a good time to post an update.

Tools still suck - no surprise here :) but they suck even worse in Eclipse than in NetBeans so even though my workplace is an Eclipse shop we're using NetBeans for our JavaFX development. I've had a quick chat with David Kaspar, a friend of mine and one of the developers who are currently working on JavaFx tools at NetBeans and he told me that Sun is aware of the situation and it is about to improve, so FX support NetBeans 6.8 should be much better.

I really hope so because the language is awesome and despite everything I do enjoy working in it.

First JavaFX impressions

In my job I've been playing around with some pretty cool and new technologies lately. This gave me the opportunity to write a a WPF based video player (with some very client specific functionality) in C# in just about a month. Coming from Java background with no prior .NET experience at all, it was quite an accomplishment. But it is not simply a credit to my genius but mostly to the tools that were available to me: Visual Studio with ReSharper. As occasional IntelliJ user I was soon very comfortable and pumping out code like nobodies business. As a SWING developer used to working with NetBeans forms editor I found the XAML editor fairly intuitive.

This brings me to my JavaFX experience. I've been assigned the task of evaluating technologies for a new UI project. I am currently down to either SWING or JavaFX, and while I would really love to use JavaFX there is a single major reason that is making me very hesitant:

Lack of Good Development Tools

While I love the demos that I downloaded for JavaFX I am sorely disappointed with the available tools. It's kind of sad really, since most of my old colleagues at Sun who used to work with me on Mobility support are working on JavaFX support now. I know many people on that team and they are some of the smartest most capable developers. Something must have gone very wrong along the way because at the time of writing this I personally find the JavaFX support in NetBeans to be an embarasement. The most basic features are missing from the editor which makes it a major pain to work with (source formatting, cut/paste imports, automatic imports while typing, auto-completion is of mark at times, etc. etc.). This makes it very difficult for me to be productive with the language from the start. Sun has been pushing JavaFX hard because it does enable some very cool UI magic but I wish they put as many resources into making it usable to developers thus speeding up adoption.

I will continue to play around with JavaFX and I hope that in the end I'll find that I can live with (and remain productive with) it's current tool set.

Cotopia: Over 1 Million games played

That's right folks - we've had over 1 million games played!! Isn't that awesome? It makes me very happy that we've been able to bring our community that much fun. I mean seriously, more than 1 million games, I can hardly believe it. It's been a good ride for us on the development team and I hope that we'll soon celebrate by releasing the long awaited mobile game of Go.
I'd like to send a big 'Thank you' to our community for making this happen.

Economy and IT jobs in Sydney

I thought that I'd quickly comment on the state of affairs regarding IT / jobs / economy here in Sydney. I was affected by the economic downturn just like many others, as companies shed contractors to tighten their budgets. This was around 2 months ago. I has taken me 8 weeks to find work - half of that time spent looking while I was finishing off my previous contract at a great Sydney IT firm Object Consulting. 8 weeks is the longest it has taken me to find work since 2002. Usually I have a job withing 2-4 weeks.

I normally look for senior developer positions related to JavaME or Core Java / Swing, which is not where most of hiring happens - any Java developer will know that majority of advertised jobs resolve around web, databases, finances, or insurance (i.e. gather financial/insurance data on the web and stuff it into a DB - not my cup of tea). This definitely doesn't the job search any easier but it ensures that usually I find something at least somewhat interesting.

In addition to taking a few extra weeks to find a job I also have to say that the compensation packages on offer are not exactly what they used to be a year ago, but they aren't completely unacceptable either.

To sum up - I believe there is work to be found even for those of us that are a little more picky, even though it may take longer to find it and one may have to do with less money.

Doing my bit for atheism :)

OK, so here is an idea for like-minded people.

At our local bookshop they have a "Religion" section with all sorts of books. Unsurprisingly, propaganda and early indoctrination literature (i.e. Children's bibles, Good News bibles, and other bibles) is on the eye-level top shelf. While some of my preferred reading such as "The God Delusion" or "God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" sits on the very bottom shelf where it doesn't receive proper attention.

The thing that I like to do, when I browse in the store, is to rearrange the books to correct the unfortunate placement of my favorites. I do this about once every 2 weeks or so.

That's the whole idea. I am not sure how much it accomplishes but since there is no church of atheism where I could make donations it's one fun way I like to try and forward the cause.