Question

When developing, I set the user.agent property to a single value, to keep compile times down. When releasing, I have a WAR file built for all user agents.

I unfortunately seem to keep forgetting to switch the property, either:

• wasting development time waiting for compiles, or
• preparing a WAR file with incomplete browser support ( not yet deployed , thankfully ).

I want to automate this, preferably using the maven-release-plugin.

Answer 1

You want to have 2 different .gwt.xml files – one used for development and one used for production.

There is a good example on the ‘Renaming modules’ section of Developer Guide/Organizing projects.

The gwt.xml file used for development would inherit from the gwt.xml file used for production and set the user.agent property as well. e.g.:

<module rename-to="com.foo.MyModule">
  <inherits name="com.foo.MyModule" />
  <set-property name="user.agent" value="ie6" />
</module>

Now, when doing development, you would use the development gwt.xml file, and when doing a production build. you would use the production gwt.xml file.

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The easiest way to achieve this with Maven is to activate the development module using a profile. I’ve written in detail about this at Maven Recipe : GWT development profile.