Java: Configuration Coal Shoveling in Hell

Went to update all 4 of my projects today and suddenly was seeing errors on the components.xml files. It was complaining about duplicate components. I had just forked this project so I figured I just need to go in and add the components.xml file to the exclusions in the validation. I have blogged about that before.

Well, literally almost an hour later, I still have 14 errors. I added both components.xml files (one in /src/main/webapp/WEB-INF and /src/test/resources/).

There is a new option in Helios: exclude validation (from the context menu). Does nothing.

How does an hour go up in smoke? Oh, that one is easy. This is eclipse. You have to do cleans over and over again, you have to close and open. Blah, blah, blah..

Readers of the cartoony Gladwell (redundant) book The Tipping Point will recognize this as Broken Windows Theory (of course, not his, again redundant). Have much more to say about this. This is the sludge of a decade of fascist configuration choices by a gestapo of ‘open‘ screamers. The result has been much garbage.

Actually, turns out in this case, it was the JBoss Tools validator that was having a problem. I would love to know why having one components.xml in the test context and one in the main one is wrong. I did some searching on the issue but did not come up with anything (unfortunately, a lot of people seemed to have sniffed around Seam but not as many seem to have gone all the way, all the more reason to get the 6 stuff done already!). Anyway, the really curious thing here is that when I first installed JBoss Tools, it didn‘t complain about this project.

Here are the pics. First, this is the usual pond to go slosh around in for an hour or so, telling eclipse which things it shouldn‘t bother trying to validate (after all, if eclipse knew what those files were 8 years on, or let you configure such a thing one time and save it as a template, then who would get to have all this config fun??):

After you‘ve beat your head in there for a while, mosey on over to the JBoss Tools config. Oh, you thought those would be the same? or merged with the eclipse ones somehow? sucker!! This is the joy of open, you piddling little fool. Only walled gardens have one place to configure something, you dumbass.

Ok, so after wasting so much time, I decided to just turn on project specific settings and then I told it that a duplicate component could be a warning. Ready for the money shot? Or what Lenny Bruce used to call the happy ending? Brace yourself. No errors. Just 271 warnings! Life is good!! (I‘m planning to set a weekend aside and get those 271 down to 0 real soon, so we can have peace for a week or so….)

Maybe with another decade‘s time, we could get to where breathing wouldn‘t involve taking in more dust than a fish sifting sand looking for a minnow…

From http://www.jroller.com/robwilliams/entry/java_configuration_coal_shoveling_in