Lately we’ve been looking at ways to improve automated testing and related tooling of our enterprise-level GWT web app. I’ve realized that in some ways, GWT is a bit hostile to automated testing, mainly because of the nature of the long GWT compile times from Java to JS. This makes unit testing somewhat challenging, but it also puts some roadblocks up for testing in a CI environment. I’ve also found out that some of our build and deployment processes are somewhat complicated due to the nature of GWT’s compile process.
Is this a general problem for “compile to JS” frameworks for webapps? I don’t have much experience with them, but I can see some potential problems for automated testing and continuous integration and deployment. Some issues I see:
- Long build and compile times preventing quick deployments
- Language the app is developed in != JS, preventing good unit testing
- Obfuscated JS in the actual app makes it more like a executable than a web app
Are these issues present in other similar frameworks, or is this more a GWT issue?
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We factor our GWT code out into “core” and “gwt” projects. The “core” project contains 100% pure Java, non-GWT code, and can be unit tested easily using regular JUnit.
How long does your build take? Ours, with about 100 classes takes 1-2 minutes, barely noticeable.
With regards to your initial question — I treat “compile to JavaScript” much the same as “compile to bytecode” or “compile to machine code”, don’t see why it would affect continuous integration.
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