GWT 1.6 - project layout of the project - mixing source code and artifacts generated by the compiler?

Question

Having just completed a project based on GWT-1.5, I'll see what we need to do to upgrade to 1.6. I am very surprised to see that GWT seems to want to write its compiled output to a military directory, where there are usually elements under source control.

What is the reason for this? Did Google really think this was a good idea? Is there a way to bypass the source code separately from artifacts created by the compiler? Is there any other reason for this that I am missing?

EDIT

It was suggested that you use the -war to specify the output directory. I have written several ANT scripts and basically it works. I had to copy my static resources like HTML, JSP, etc. To this directory (I use target/war, maven-style). Is that what most people do? Or are you just letting GWT write your result to the source controlled war and tell VCS to ignore files that are not version controlled? It occurred to me that it might be useful to use GWT to write to this directory directly, since Jetty can automatically notice changes in JSP, HTML, etc., and there is no need to make a copy to make these changes visible.

Answer 1

Salvador Diaz provided a great solution .

Answer 2

Use the -war option to control where the output goes.

FYI: The wiki has a doc project that I hope will give you a little bit of what they think.

See also Release Notes , which discusses the new layout of the project, as well as some points to consider when making this change.

Answer 3

Yes, look at the -war option, which may help. What I do (it may not be as clean as maven and I don't use -war), I put my entire project in SVN and then ignore the subdir that contains js and other compiled bs along with the dir classes. That way, I have everything else in version control, including the libraries I wanted. So another member of the team can simply check the entire project from SVN, compile and ready to go.