Monday, April 23, 2007

Keep On Keeping On

So it didn't take too long for me to realize I had the g3p project setup all wrong. When I posted last I was using Google Code to host the GWT compiled files (which are the Javascript/HTML/CSS source files) and not the actual Java source. This was stupid for more than one reason. First of all, GWT hashes the names of the important compiled files in order to prevent browsers from caching them. This would have been a nightmare to manage with subversion so I'm glad I was able to fix this early on. Second of all, it doesn't make any sense to have an open-source project that doesn't provide you with the actual source. So after many iterations of trying to get the directory structure right, the svn trunk finally contains the *right* elements.

This means in order to compile you will have to:
a) create a new project in GWT with the name com.flatown.client.g3p (this requires downloading GWT of course)
b) checkout the source code from Google Code into the src/ directory for your GWT distribution (you might have to delete the files GWT created there first)

Of course, this doesn't solve the problem of being able to use it as a Google Gadget. I was not happy with the idea of checking out the source code on my server and having to sync/recompile it every time I made changes. Nor did I like that I would have to install Java on the server in order to do this (I don't even know if I'm allowed to). My solution to this was to create a bash script that executes a simple rsync command to synchronize my local public/ directory with my server's, which isn't all that clever. Nonetheless, after all this, I finally have a comfortable development cycle.

I've also already done a decent amount of work on the gadget itself, which can now be found at:

http://www.flatown.com/g3p/g3p.xml

(If you use the Google Personalized Homepage just click Add Stuff in the upper righthand corner, then click Add by URL next to the search box button and paste the above URL into the textbox that pops up)

All in all I'm pretty happy with the progress I've made. Next time I'll go into the details of the actual Java/GWT development process, which even so far could have been a whole blog entry unto itself. Anyway, back to work...

1 comment:

Kenny said...

Hi Jared,

Check out this site to make an 'add to google' button that automatically links a gadget to one's google personalized homepage. It's not much, but probably useful for the not-to-savvy users.