A couple weeks back, I started a new project, and today I decided to declare it a 1.0. The premise of this project is simple: I really, really hate Designer. Since the original post, it's expanded into a set of tools that cover three main tasks:

ODP Compilation

The main impetus of the whole thing was to get a way to compile On-Disk Projects into working NSFs without using the extremely-fiddly Headless Designer route (and thus also decoupling the build process from Windows). In 1.0, ODP compilation works by installing a set of plugins on a Domino server (Windows or Linux), configuring some Maven properties, and wrapping the ODP in a Maven project. That process can upload dependent OSGi plugins and compile complex XPages apps as well as import the expected normal legacy Notes resources.

NSF Deployment

In addition to compilation, the Maven wrapper can be configured to deploy the NSF to a Domino server also running the plugins. This portion isn't as battle-hardened as compilation, but it seems to work, as long as your server ID is authorized to run the resultant XPages application, since that's how it'll be signed. Perhaps in the future I'll add the ability to sign with an ID out of an ID Vault.

Eclipse Tooling

In Eclipse Neon or above, the tooling adds a bit of knowledge about how to handle ODP Maven projects as well as some autocomplete capabilities for editing XSP source. Currently, autocomplete knows about the components that come with Domino 9.0.1 FP 10 as well as any Custom Controls inside the NSF, but in time I'd also like to include XPages-Library-contributed components. Additionally, it configures the project as a Plug-in Project with dependencies based on the selected XPages libraries and with source folders and embedded jars set up in the classpath.

The End Result

This project started out as just wanting to get Jenkins compilation working more reliably, but it's grown a bit to also allow for a smoother developer experience when working with NSF data in Eclipse. The "use case", for lack of a better term, that I'm aiming for is when you have the bulk of your code in OSGi plugins but have an NSF to maintain. I don't have any interest in replacing every editor from Designer, but I'd like to have enough that it's practical to do some basic XPages and legacy dev work without having to go over to Designer for everything. It's not fully there yet, but this version is a good start.

Getting The Code

The project is hosted on OpenNTF, and the source code is hosted on GitHub.