ext plugin XML file format

[Andrew Brock, modificado 7 Anos atrás.]

I've inherited a Liferay 6.1.0 CE GA1 environment that has an ext plugin deployed. I'm trying to move the build process from a manual one to a Maven-powered one.

When I use the Liferay Maven plugin, the ext-<PluginName>-ext.xml file that gets generated has more <ext-info><files><file> listings than what's in our current production environment (which wasn't build using Maven). In fact, it's pretty much just a full list of classes in the ext plugin project, plus the custom util-bridges/util-java/util-taglib jar files and some xml & jsp files.

My question is about the format of the ext-<PluginName>-ext.xml file and how its contents affect what parts of the ext plugin get loaded by Liferay.

If a class/jar file is not listed in the "<file>" elements within this xml file, does that mean that it will not get loaded by Liferay as part of the ext plugin patching process?

[David H Nebinger, modificado 7 Anos atrás.]

I never had to worry about the contents of the file.

You should just have to drop the relevant files into the relevant sections of the EXT plugin subdirs and do a build. The EXT war file should be created and be complete in what you need to deploy.

[Andrew Brock, modificado 7 Anos atrás.]

Thanks David.

Because the ext-<PluginName>-ext.xml file that we currently have deployed does not list all of the .class files that are part of the ext plugin package, I'm thinking that our previous developers hand-crafted the file, instead of letting it be generated automatically (perhaps to exclude some overrides that were created for testing purposes only, but that they didn't want to remove from source control).

Hence my question on whether this file actually controls which Liferay class overrides get loaded as part of the ext plugin, or whether it's there for some other reason.

[David H Nebinger, modificado 7 Anos atrás.]

Well, I can see when maven generates it, the file contains the list of files included in the ext for deployment. It looks like, even though there are more files in the ext war file, the xml file lists all of those that would need to be deployed.

If your team was manually editing the file, I'm not sure, but Liferay should only have paid attention to deploying what was listed in this file.

But then again, Liferay might be bulk copying directories to target locations during deployment and might not limit to what the file points to.

I guess I'd check by finding a .class file that is in the ext plugin but not listed in the XML file. If that file was also deployed to the portal, then the likely path was the EXT deployer just bulk copied the folders/files and your team was just lucky they didn't have to go back and keep that XML file in sync.

However, if the file was not deployed, then it's probably like you're guessing, the team left some artifacts in there (perhaps didn't do a clean build or something) and even though the files are included in the EXT war, the EXT deployer didn't push them because they weren't listed in the file.