GAE Development - Development Environment Setup (HotSwap)

Question

I'm quite new to develop on GAE. Need just sort out few questions about setting up development.

I'm currently using Eclipse 3.7.x, Google Suite Plugin 2.5.2 r37

Related links I found:

• http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=1787
• GAE - Development server in Eclipse doesn't update?
• http://code.google.com/p/gae-wtp-plugin/

I came from standard LAMP development environment. Changes are propagated immediately to development server (usually localhost) and I can control deployment of application to production server through DCVS/SVN and attached handlers updating remote codebase.

I'd expect Google Plugin allowing us to do the same. Necessary functions I (probably) need:

• On-Save handler to recompile and update development code
• Production like development environment (for testing in almost-real conditions)
• Deployment to production environment

The last one is simply using DCVS/SVN to tag code and save the trunk branch, and using Google > Deploy to App Engine option to push it to remote server.

But how can I solve the first two requirements? Do I really need them, or is it only my hangover from web development, and development process in GAE works differently?

If the first one is solvable through GAE WTP Plugin, can you please more elaborate on how to setup development with this plugin, as I was not able to achieve anything more, than server, which has to be restarted in the same manner as Google Plugin default GAE development server does.

Answer 1

You can update development code pretty quickly with the yellow reload button. For me, with about 100 server classes, this takes 2-5 seconds.

The development environment is reasonably good - you can simulate HRD and stuff like that. Of course, it's not actually a distributed cloud environment - we do most testing on local servers, and then have a whole test app on the cloud for a last round of simulation. Of course, some things change when 1000 people are accessing it at once, but I don't know how to get around that.

You can find the reload button on the Development View pane:

Show View > Development Mode">