Problem migrating GUI to another project

[ahi]

Hi Forum!

I'm new to this forum and am glad to see that answers are given very fast (most of the time). So I hope this is the same in my case...

I've created a GUI for a project and did it by creating a separate project first. This worked very good with the GWT Designer.
I'm using it with eclipse-3.3.1 under Windows XP.

The old and the new project are in the same eclipse so it should be a question of project parameters, that something is not working.
The old project has been transfered to a GWT project and all necessary entries in .classpath and .project are where they should be.

Unfortunately, I cannot start the GUI designer in the old project. The following error message appears:

"Designer was unable to find any GUI elements in your source."
"Check that the open compilation unit is a GUI class."

Well I checked. And even a newly created class creates the same error while the same class works fine in the new project environment.

I checked the GWT path in the preference which is C:\entwicklung\gwt-windows-1.4.61

What else could be wrong in my environment?

Any help is very appreciated!


Andre Hinrichs

[Eric Clayberg]

Please attach the project you are having a problem with.

You should also review the GWT Designer FAQ.

[ahi]

Hi!

I found, what was "wrong" and I just want to let you know, so that this eventually can improve your product.

One of our developers moved the GWT jar files to a project folder and pointed to them in eclipse via "External JARs" settings in the eclipse project properties instead of variable.

E.g. one of the old (not working) setting was: gwt-user.jar -> OurProject/WebContent/WEB-INF/lib
And all GWT jars were put into that folder.

Changing the setting to a variable (GWT_HOME/gwt-user.jar -> C:\development\gwt-windows-1.4.61\gwt-user.jar) solved this issue.

But I do not see, why the first setting would not be valid. Compiling and starting the application was possible with that setting.

So, this is an info for you, that this can happen. On my side, everything is fine now!

Thanks anyway,
Andre Hinrichs

[Eric Clayberg]

For GWT Designer to be able to edit the contents of a project, it needs to understand the project structure and it needs to know where to find GWT.

The GWT Project wizard supplied by GWT Designer sets up the project using the structure it expects.

GWT Designer also supplies a Convert project into GWT project command that will convert an existing project into a form that GWT Designer can work with.

That command does a couple of things:

1. It adds the GWT nature and builder tp the .project file.

2. It adds GWT_HOME/gwt-user.jar to the .classpath file

GWT_HOME is used to find not only the GWT runtime files, but also the GWT development libraries (like gwt-dev-windows.jar) that are used in the design view, so it is important that that variable be set from the Designer > GWT preference page.