Issue
I have a very large maven project, and when I'm debugging, it sucks to have to rebuild the entire project just to see the changes. My current method is to compile the java file in IntelliJ, then copy the class file in my target directory, to my tomcat/webapps/project/ directory, and replace the existing class file with the intellij compiled class file. Then rebuild the war file, and replace it with the existing war file in the tomcat/webapps directory.
I want to be able to automate this process. I looked into doing it with the javac command, but I'm having problems with packages be imported from jar files in the .m2 directory, and can't figure out how to automate the classpath, depending on the specific file. I'm sure IntelliJ does this automatically, and was wondering if there's a way to run IntelliJ's compiler from the command line, or if anyone has any insight into how I can get javac to work for just the one file in my whole project scope.
Any help is appreciate, thanks!
Solution
IntelliJ delegates (by default, there are options to delegate to the Eclipse compiler or other ones) to the javac compiler.
If you do not want to import your project into IntelliJ, then you can use maven from the command line to build the project.
If you do not want to build the whole project, then you can use javac from the command line.
To generate your classpath, use : mvn dependency:build-classpath -Dmdep.outputFile=classpath.txt
classpath.txt will contain your classpath.
From then you can do : javac -cp (contents of classpath.txt) your java file.
IntelliJ is fast even on large maven projects and it can easily compile into an exploded war your tomcat would point to. It is unclear to me on why you would not want to benefit from IntelliJ.
Answered By - Laurent Perez