IntelliJ Tomcat Automatic Redeploy when running a gradle task - intellij-idea

Question

What I am trying to accomplish:
I want the tomcat 9 server to execute an automatic redeploy when I run a Gradle task that updates my HTML files.
This is my setup:
I use IntelliJ 2020.03 (ultimate edition), tomcat 9, the application is a GWT application.
My Configuration for Tomcat:
This is what I see when I hit the "Configure ..." button next to the line labeled "Application server:"
This is my Gradle task I run but tomcat does not automatically redeploy the changes
Things I already tried:
According to [https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/updating-applications-on-application-servers.html] I should have an option to "Update resources". But my options are limited to:
Therefore I assume I need to have "Exploded artifacts in local application server run configurations".
Therefore I headed to Tomcat -> Edit Configuration
I replaced the deploy to the exploded artifact:
Using this I get the following error message on starting up tomcat:
[2021-02-12 08:46:05,533] Artifact Gradle : NewComApp.war (exploded): com.intellij.javaee.oss.admin.jmx.JmxAdminException: com.intellij.execution.ExecutionException: C:\Users\heckner\IdeaProjects\NewComApp\build\libs\exploded\NewComApp.war not found for the web module.
So I decided to compare the artifact that "works" (but does not update the HTML files) with the "exploded" artifact which would be probably the right one but throws an error message on startup of tomcat.
This is the one which works ("NewComWar.war"):
This is the one which does throw an error message on startup ("NewComApp.war (exploded)":
As you can see in the image under "... which works". the war already seems to be "exploded". So why does IntelliJ does not offer the "update resources"?
But never the less, when I switch in Tomcat Edition to "NewCompApp.war (exploded)" i am able to select "update resources" in the drop down:
So probably this would be the way to go.
It obviously boils down to the point: What is wrong with the artifact declaration above so that tomcat throws the error message?
The feedback was: "ctually "NewComWar.war" is an archive that contains exploded artifact, that's why only "Redeploy" is possible. Please check that exploded artifact is created in "Output directory". "
Now the question is how I can add the exploded war to the Output Directory?
I tried:
but then I can only select from:
When I add this, it looks like this:
When I run Tomcat, it still says:
[2021-02-12 12:24:54,224] Artifact Gradle : NewComApp.war (exploded): com.intellij.javaee.oss.admin.jmx.JmxAdminException: com.intellij.execution.ExecutionException: C:\Users\heckner\IdeaProjects\NewComApp\build\libs\exploded\NewComApp.war not found for the web module.
Now I found the following tip (thanks Evgeny):
https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-178450#focus=streamItem-27-4068591.0-0
I switched under Settings -> Build, Execution, Deployment -> Build Tools -> Gradle: "Build and Run:" IntelliJ IDEA
I added this snipped to build.gradle:
task explodedWar(type: Copy) {
into "$buildDir/libs/exploded/${war.archiveFileName.get()}"
with war
}
war.dependsOn explodedWar
I switched the artifact which is deployed to the tomcat to
this automatically added the Gradle task:
Build 'Gradle:NewComApp.war (exploded) artifact to the
which is defined like this:
This accomplishes two things:
I can choose "Update resources" on my Edit Configuration for Tomcat like shown below:
My deployment runs well under tomcat
But ... :-)
Updates to the HTML files (within the war file) are not exploded to the NewComWar.war directory.
When I start tomcat I see the following file structure under C:\users<myname>\IdeaProjects\NewComApp\Libs\
The reason for this is that we use a Gradle task that generates the HTML files.
This task is called "copyHTML"
Under build.gradle it is defined now as follows:
war {
from 'war'
dependsOn copyHtml
exclude excludeInWar
doFirst {
manifest {
def version = ant.hasProperty('gitversion') ? ant.gitversion : 'undefined version'
println "Version: ${version}"
attributes("Implementation-Title": project.name, "Implementation-Version": version, "Built-By": new Date())
}
}
}
task explodedWar(type: Copy) {
into "$buildDir/libs/exploded/${war.archiveFileName.get()}"
with war
}
war.dependsOn explodedWar
copyHtml {
dependsOn generatorClasses
inputs.dir 'html'
inputs.dir 'email'
inputs.dir 'email.Tags'
inputs.dir props.getProperty('generator.htmlfiles.prefix') + 'html'
inputs.dir props.getProperty('generator.htmlfiles.prefix') + 'html.MeetingApp'
inputs.dir props.getProperty('generator.htmlfiles.prefix') + 'staticHtml'
inputs.properties props
outputs.dirs 'war', 'resources/com/newcomapp/server/mail'
doFirst {
ant.properties["generator.classpath"] = sourceSets.generator.runtimeClasspath.getAsPath()
}
}
task warWithoutGwt(type: War, dependsOn: war) {
}
gradle.taskGraph.whenReady { graph ->
if (graph.hasTask(warWithoutGwt)) {
compileGwt.enabled = false
}
}
When I run the Gradle task "warWithoutGWT" while tomcat still runs it says:
C:\Users<myname>\IdeaProjects\NewComApp\build\libs\exploded\NewComApp.war\WEB-INF\classes\com\newcomapp\server\integration\GeoLite2-Country.mmdb (The operation is not applicable to a file with an open area assigned to a user)
I assume that tomcat still holds a reference to that file, and the Gradle task tries to overwrite it (although there was no change to that file). Furthermore, I assume that this kills the rest of the Gradle task so that it does not update the HTML files (it's only an assumption though). How can I arrange an exploded war so that write-protected files are omitted and do not kill the rest of the Gradle task execution?
My answer up to now for this problem is: I changed the gradle script:
task explodedWar(type: Copy) {
into "$buildDir/libs/exploded/${war.archiveFileName.get()}"
exclude "**/*.mmdb"
with war
}
war.dependsOn explodedWar
so I added an "exclude for mmdb files". And this really works.
Is this a correct and good solution or do I overlook something? The reason I am asking is that changing HTML files in the scope of tomcat should be something very common with tomcat based projects. So I wonder if there is a more standardized, easier solution to this? It seems quite clumsy to copy and explode with additional gradle tasks the war file instead of IDEA take care of this.