Chapter 7. Building, Packaging, and Deploying
This chapter covers
- Building and packaging GWT modules
- Building and deploying GWT applications
- Managing and automating the build process
I learned very early the difference between knowing the name of something and knowing something.
Richard Feynman
After you start working with GWT, there will come a point when you need to step out of development mode and into the realm of building, packaging, and deploying your projects.
GWT applications can be broken up into multiple logical modules, and modules can be used as libraries or general components. Modules offer a lot of versatility beyond the configuration and inheritance they enable, which we first covered in chapter 1. In this chapter, we’re going to once again discuss modules, but this time in the context of building and packaging.
Packaging happens both on the micro level, with modules, and on the larger macro level with entire applications. GWT components are packaged into modules, which are shared and reused as Java Archive (JAR) files. Applications, which are made up of multiple modules, and other JAR files and configuration elements are then typically packaged into larger Web Application Archive (WAR) files. Once all of the required artifacts are bundled up into an application, they are then typically deployed to a servlet container to be made available to the world.