Wednesday August 01, 2007
Wednesday August 01, 2007
Go With Grails
Now I can open all Grails applications in NetBeans IDE, without a problem. Yesterday, I still had some problems, because of not having copied over all project files, required for a folder to be recognized as being a NetBeans project. Though I can't run the application yet [that's hopefully the next step, integrating Groovy script calls, probably based on Coyote and earlier investigations I did on Groovy and NetBeans], I already have found some use for the current status. Two concrete examples are that I can now inspect the source structure of samples, within the IDE, which is nicer than doing so without an IDE, because in the IDE the Grails samples are organized logically, with nodes representing the most important folders. With one glance, I now understand more of the sample than I do when I look at it in a file explorer external to the IDE. Secondly, even though Groovy syntax coloring is (currently!) not supported, there are several other useful editor features, such as the NetBeans web.xml editor, which gives me a much better view on the deployment descriptor than what the raw XML gives me, as shown in the screenshot below.
Plus, the files that are added to define the folder as a NetBeans project are completely non-intrusive. What that means is that I can simply run the application [or perform any other Grails commands] from the terminal window! In other words, the IDE is the editor [though imperfect because of lack of Groovy support, currently] while the terminal window is the place from which I [currently] deploy the application. Thus, this is my development environment for Grails:
New projects cannot be created yet [must definitely delegate to Grails commands, but expose them to the IDE, as is done for Rails]. Not perfect, but certainly not bad either. I am aware, though, that I have committed several unforgivable sins in the development of this module, already. One example is the way the Grails application becomes a NetBeans project, not via an import wizard, but via the insertion of the NetBeans project files (as stated above, non-intrusive, plus they are non-propietary, since they are nothing other than XML and Properties files]. However, since I have no questions to ask the user [unlike the Eclipse importer, for example], there's no need for such a wizard. The simple insertion of the required NetBeans project files is enough. So, yes, a sin. But, no, not unforgivable. Plus, the Grails user is going to be one million times happier, simply being able to open their Grails applications, rather than having to use some kind of import wizard to convert their Grails application to a NetBeans-aware Grails application.
Aug 01 2007, 12:59:22 PM PDT Permalink
3 Comments