GWT

GWT is the official open source project for GWT releases 2.5 and onwards.

In this document you have some quick instructions to build the SDK from source code and to run its tests.

For a more detailed documentation visit our web site. If you are interested in contributing with the project, please read the Making GWT better section.

This Fork

This is a fork from https://github.com/gwtproject/gwt that has a branch issue-7987-compatibility-with-issue-9584 which has an implementation for GWT Issue 7987 which the GWT team decided not to pull.

The key difference, when used with the -Dgwt.rpc.version=9 system property for a GWT server application, is that serialization of GWT RPC responses is done by streaming the return value's serialized representation to the HTTP output stream. This way, multiple copies of the serialized response do not need to be allocated and kept in memory. The pre-requisite for this was to write the response in its natural serialization order when version 9 of the RPC serialization protocol is selected, and not---as is the standard for the current upstream main branch---in backward order. The backward order is one of the reasons why the full serialization result needs to be kept in memory before sending it into the response stream can commence. Additionally, UTF encoding and conversion from a String to a byte array requires additional live copies of the response in memory in the upstream version.

gwtproject#7987 (comment) shows the memory and runtime benefits of branch issue-7987-compatibility-with-issue-9584 on this fork. It comes at the expense of a minor incompatibility in case exceptions are thrown during the serialization process, where the upstream standard version, which is still used unless -Dgwt.rpc.version=9 is specified with this branch, will send a well-formed error response, and the new version 9 will have to simply abort the stream because it already started writing an OK response. The result, however, is more or less the same, namely that the client will not be able to receive a valid return value from the method called, and a general issue then seems to exist with the server-side application which was unable to serialize a return value.

Therefore, this fork allows GWT developers a choice regarding server-side performance and memory consumption.

Building the GWT SDK:

• In order to build GWT, java and ant are required in your system.

• You need the GWT tools repository checked out and up-to-date. By default it is expected to be found at ../tools. You can override the default location using the GWT_TOOLS environment variable or passing -Dgwt.tools= argument to ant.

• To create the SDK distribution files run:

  $ ant clean dist-dev

  or if you don't have python and g++ just run

  $ ant clean dist-dev

  Then you will get all .jar files in the folder build/lib and the redistributable file will be: build/dist/gwt-0.0.0.zip

  if you want to specify a different version number run:

  $ ant clean dist-dev -Dgwt.version=x.x.x

• To compile everything including examples you have to run

  $ ant clean dist

How to verify GWT code conventions:

• In GWT we have some conventions so as all code written by contributors look similar being easier to review.

• After you make any modification, run this command to compile everything including tests, to check APIs, and to verify code style. It shouldn't take longer than 3-4 minutes.

  $ ant compile.tests apicheck checkstyle

How to run GWT tests

• Previously to run any test you have to set some environment variables to guarantee that they are run in the same conditions for all developers.

  In a Unix like platform you can use the export command:

  $ export TZ=America/Los_Angeles ANT_OPTS=-Dfile.encoding=UTF-8

  But in Windows™ you have to set the time-zone in your control panel, and the environment variables using the command set.

• Finally you can run all test suites with the following command, but be prepared because it could take hours, and probably it would fail because of timeouts, etc.

  $ ant test

• Thus, you might want to run only certain tests so as you can focus on checking the modifications you are working on.

  GWT build scripts use specific ant tasks and a bunch of system properties listed in the following table to specify which tests to run and how.

  For instance to run the task test in the module user you have to change to the user folder and run ant with the task as argument, adding any other property with the -D flag:

  $ ( cd user && ant test -Dtest.emma.htmlunit.disable=true ; cd .. )

  Module	Task	Property to skip	Description
  dev	test	test.dev.disable	GWT compiler & dev libraries
  codeserver	test	test.codeserver.disable	SuperDevMode server
  user	test	test.user.disable	GWT user API and JRE emulation
  user	test.nongwt	test.nongwt.disable	Run tests that not require GWTTestCase
  user	test.dev.htmlunit	test.dev.htmlunit.disable	Run dev-mode tests with HtmlUnit
  user	test.web.htmlunit	test.web.htmlunit.disable	Run web-mode tests with HtmlUnit
  user	test.draft.htmlunit	test.draft.htmlunit.disable	Run draft compiled HtmlUnit tests
  user	test.nometa.htmlunit	test.nometa.htmlunit.disable	Run -XdisableClassMetadata tests with HtmlUnit
  user	test.emma.htmlunit	test.emma.htmlunit.disable	Run emma tests with HtmlUnit
  user	test.coverage.htmlunit	test.coverage.htmlunit.disable	Run tests for coverage support
  user	test.dev.selenium	test.dev.selenium.disable	Run dev-mode tests using Selenium RC servers
  user	test.web.selenium	test.web.selenium.disable	Run web tests using Selenium RC servers
  user	test.draft.selenium	test.draft.selenium.disable	Run draft compiled tests using Selenium RC servers
  user	test.nometa.selenium	test.nometa.selenium.disable	Run -XdisableClassMetadata tests using Selenium RC servers
  user	test.emma.selenium	test.emma.selenium.disable	Run emma tests with Selenium RC servers
  requestfactory	test	test.requestfactory.disable	Request Factory library
  tools	test	test.tools.disable	Some tools used in GWT development

  Additionally you can utilize some variables to filter which test to run in each task:

  Module	Task	Properties	Default
  dev/core	test	gwt.junit.testcase.dev.core.includes	**/com/google/**/*Test.class
  		gwt.junit.testcase.dev.core.excludes
  user	test	gwt.junit.testcase.includes	**/*Suite.class
  user	test.nongwt	gwt.nongwt.testcase.includes	**/*JreSuite.class
  		gwt.nongwt.testcase.excludes
  user	test.web.* test.draft.* test.nometa.*	gwt.junit.testcase.web.includes	**/*Suite.class
  		gwt.junit.testcase.web.excludes	**/*JsInteropSuite.class,**/*JreSuite.class,***/OptimizedOnly*
  user	test.dev.* test.emma.*	gwt.junit.testcase.dev.includes	**/*Suite.class
  		gwt.junit.testcase.dev.excludes	**/*JsInteropSuite.class,**/*JreSuite.class,***/OptimizedOnly*

Examples

• Run all tests in dev

  $ ( cd dev && ant test ; cd .. )

  Note: that the last `cd ..' is only needed in Windows.

• There is another option to do the same but without changing to the module folder. We have to specify the module as the ant task, and the task as a target argument.

  $ ant dev -Dtarget=test

• Run all tests in codeserver

  $ ( cd dev/codeserver && ant test )

  or

  $ ant codeserver -Dtarget=test -Dtest.dev.disable=true

  Note: that we disable dev tests because code server depends on dev and we don`t want to run its tests.

• Run all tests in tools

  $ ant tools -Dtarget=test -Dtest.dev.disable=true -Dtest.user.disable=true

• Run only the JsniRefTest in dev

  $ ant dev -Dtarget=test \
      -Dgwt.junit.testcase.dev.core.includes="**/JsniRefTest.class"
  

• Run a couple of tests in dev

  $ ant dev -Dtarget=test \
      -Dgwt.junit.testcase.dev.core.includes="**/JsniRefTest.class,**/JsParserTest.class"
  

  Note: that you have to use regular expressions separated by comma to select the test classes to execute.

• Run all Jre tests in user, they should take not longer than 3min. We have two ways to run them. Although the second case is more complex it is here to know how disable properties work.

  $ ( cd user && ant test.nongwt )

  or

  $ ant user -Dtarget=test
         -Dtest.dev.disable=true \
         -Dtest.codeserver.disable=true \
         -Dtest.requestfactory.disable=true \
         -Dtest.tools.disable=true \
         -Dtest.dev.htmlunit.disable=true \
         -Dtest.web.htmlunit.disable=true \
         -Dtest.coverage.htmlunit.disable=true \
         -Dtest.dev.selenium.disable=true \
         -Dtest.draft.htmlunit.disable=true \
         -Dtest.draft.selenium.disable=true \
         -Dtest.emma.htmlunit.disable=true \
         -Dtest.emma.selenium.disable=true \
         -Dtest.nometa.htmlunit.disable=true \
         -Dtest.nometa.selenium.disable=true \
         -Dtest.web.selenium.disable=true
  

  Note: that we have to set all disable variables but test.nongwt.disable

• Run certain Jre tests in the user module.

  $ ( cd user && ant test.nongwt -Dgwt.nongwt.testcase.includes="**/I18NJreSuite.class" )

• Run all GWT tests in user using htmlunit in dev mode.

  $ ( cd user && ant test.dev.htmlunit )