Yesterday, somone I work with asked me a question that stumped me. I had an answer for her but it didn't answer her actual question... You see, she is working with a rather large
Java Dynamic Web Project in Eclipse and building the entire project apparently takes a lot of time. So she informs me that she has all of the application code in a JAR file (this is the jar that will get released in the final package) and wants to make a change to one of the classes in the jar file. So what she does is just get the source for that one class and put it in her project. I come into the loop when she calls me and asks "Why is there no class file after making the change to the source?" (She has build automatically turned on for the project)
I told her that this was probably not the best way to set up her project. I told her that she would probably want to get all of the source for the application and put it into her project if she was going to be making changes to code that will be eventually released in the jar file. I am thinking that doing this will take care of her problem with the class that is not getting built. But, I still wonder, do people actually do what she was trying to do? Is this acceptable? Is this probably the reason why Eclipse was not automatically building the class after she made her change or does she have something else dorked up in her environment?