WebLogic: The Definitive Guide

Split Directory Development

WebLogic 8.1 introduces a split development directory structure to facilitate the iterative development of applications on a single WebLogic instance. This development methodology allows you to very quickly create, build, and deploy applications to WebLogic Server. The essence of the methodology, as the name suggests, is a split development directory. In other words, the files within the enterprise application are spread across two directories:

• A source directory that contains the source for the enterprise application and all its modules, including the deployment descriptor files

• A build directory that contains the compiled classes generated by the build process.

Even though it is the build directory that is deployed, WebLogic can recognize the split directory deployment and automatically locate information from both the source and build directories.

The split development directory structure is applicable only to enterprise applications that exist in exploded form. If you are developing web applications or EJB modules only, you easily can organize them in an enterprise application and still benefit from the split development directory approach. The best way to illustrate the technique is by example, and the following sections look at all aspects of the development. We also examine the directory layout, and the various Ant tasks (wlcompile, wlappc, wldeploy, wlpackage) used to support this scheme.

You don’t have to use the split development directory scheme ...