Dev server can now refresh & rebuild a whole project on demand

Dev server can now refresh & rebuild a whole project on demand

The dev server has a new endpoint — /refreshProject?project=NAME — that refreshes a project from disk and rebuilds it, all in one call. It’s the programmatic equivalent of closing and reopening the project in Eclipse: it picks up file changes made outside the Eclipse editor and recompiles them. Add &build=false to refresh without building, or omit project to refresh every open project.

Why this matters: Eclipse only notices edits it made itself. When something else changes your source on disk — a code generator, a script, or an AI coding assistant working in the repo — Eclipse doesn’t know, so your running app keeps using the old compiled classes and the change seems to do nothing. You’d normally fix that by manually closing and reopening the project. Now a single HTTP call does it.

Why this is useful. It turns out to be the missing piece for working with an AI assistant on a live WebObjects/Parsley app. The assistant edits your source, calls /refreshProject, and the running app hot-swaps the change in immediately — so it can load a page and actually see the result of what it just wrote. No build/redeploy/restart cycle in between. The loop goes from “edit, then a human babysits a rebuild” to “edit, refresh, observe” — in seconds. The same applies to any external tool that edits your project and wants the running app to reflect it.

From the changelog, June 1, 2026.