referencing application contexts sitting in jar files

[kbaum]

Currently I work on a large project divided into multiple subprojects. This allows developers to only download the project they are working on. Needed classes and application context xml files are included within the project's classpath. The problem is that the spring IDE requires the developer to check out all other projects since application contexts cannot be referenced within jar files.

Are there any plans to allow spring IDE to reference application contexts sitting within jar files?

Thanks.

-karl

[Torsten Juergeleit]

Are there any plans to allow spring IDE to reference application contexts sitting within jar files?

Plans and a nearly finished implementation already exist. But I have no clue how to access a non-java resource within a jar file.

While traversing JDT's AST in Eclipse 3.1.x these classpath entries are described by the type "org.eclipse.jdt.internal.core.JarEntryFile". This type is internal and provides no way to get the entry file name from (ok, I could parse the result of "toString()").

Torsten

[kbaum]

Self admittedly I am very unfamiliar with developing eclipse plugins. That being said, what is stopping us from referencing the application contexts in the same way spring accesses these files? Can we simply create a classpath form these jars and access resources using the ClassLoader.getResources() method?

While I am thinking of it, if the above is possible, it would be very convenient if Spring IDE allowed one to include application context files based on regular expression matching of classpath resources. If we can do it within Spring, why not Spring IDE?

I am sure there are some limitations within eclipse and I am just thinking optimistically. Still, it seems like what we can do within Spring, we should be able to do within Spring IDE.

Thanks.

-karl