Nimen Hao! (Hi Y'all!),

• Liferay Hook Configuration Editor
• Support for importing Liferay binary plugins as new projects
• JSP Debugging for projects deployed to Remote Liferay Servers
• Support for Glassfish as a Remote Liferay Server (through server-manager-web Liferay plugin)

I'd like to mention one of the new features in the upcoming release of Liferay 6.1, which is the remote development and deployment support from Liferay IDE.  The idea is that with this feature you can build Liferay projects in Liferay IDE like normal but instead of the Liferay server running locally it is running on a remote host.  This is accomplished through two things, 1) new remote server adapter in Liferay IDE and 2) Server manager plugin (new in 6.1) deployed to the remote Liferay server 

This feature will be officially available with the Liferay 6.1 CE release, but since it is only in beta, now is a good time to try it out and give feedback.

For those who wish to try this out here are the steps to setting it up.

1. Download the Liferay Portal 6.1 Beta4 Tomcat bundle (Only tomcat is supported in beta4,  both JBoss and Glassfish will be supported by 6.1 GA release)

2. Start Tomcat bundle on remote host (or even localhost)

3. Download the Server Manager plugin for 6.1 Beta4 (This plugin provides the API needed by Liferay IDE to administer remote plugins)

4. Deploy Server Manager plugin into remote Tomcat server

5. Install the latest stable or nightly version of Liferay IDE (links are updatesite URLs to use in Eclipse install manager)

6. Create a new server in Liferay IDE, File > New > Server > Liferay > Remote Liferay Server

7. Specify a local tomcat bundle for the runtime stub (this is needed for libraries to compile project)

8. Specify the IP address of remote tomcat server along with Omni admin username/password

Once you have done this you should see the server console log messages printed in the normal Eclipse console view.

9. Create and deploy Liferay projects as usual then publish (deploy) them to the server, see Liferay IDE getting started guide for a walkthrough of this.

Now when you modify files in your project, every 15 seconds it will publish the delta of any changes to remote server.  However, you can publish changes immediately using the "publish" action in the servers view.  If you want to change the automatic publish rate you can do that in the server configuration editor (double click server in Servers view).

For anyone who decides to try this out and want to give feedback with suggestions or problems please either open a JIRA ticket for the IDE project or enter a new topic on the IDE forums.

Good luck and Happy Holidays!

Hi all,

We just released version 1.4 of Liferay IDE.  Help > Check for updates... is the fastest way if you already have it installed.  If not here is the URL update site:

http://releases.liferay.com/tools/ide/eclipse/indigo/stable/  
(click here for detailed install instructions)

I hope to increase the speed at which we push out new versions of the IDE.  I'd like to have a new release at least every 6-8 weeks.  The next release 1.5 will probably land about mid-november.

I've created a Liferay IDE 1.4 Release page where you can see some details and screenshots about the new release.  Here are the most important new features available in this release:

• Liferay 6.1 Server (Tomcat 7) server adapter
• Portlet Configuration Editor

Liferay 6.1 (nightly/trunk) recently switched to Tomcat 7 so we've now added support for launching Tomcat7 in Liferay IDE with a new server type.  

Also in this new release there is a new portlet configuration editor available by default.  Before showing off any screenshots of the editor, I would like to publically thank a Liferay community member, Kamesh Sampath for contributing the code for this editor.  He volunteered many hours of his own personal time to build it and is committed to make it a first-class editor for Liferay and portlet developers.  Personally it has been a pleasure for me to collaborate with Kamesh over last few weeks working on this editor.  I look forward to seeing more excellent features from him on both Liferay IDE and Lifery Portal in the future.   If you like the new editor, feel free to drop him a note on his profile page.

That is it for now.  I'm actually just about to head to Hong Kong with my familiy this week since its October Holiday here in China and the office is shut down for the week.  I'll be checking the Liferay IDE forums at least one a day to help any users with upgrade issues.  

Liferay IDE 1.3 Now Available to Download

A new stable release of Liferay IDE, version 1.3, is now available now on the stable update-site URL for existing Helios users here:

http://releases.liferay.com/tools/ide/eclipse/helios/stable/

If you already have Liferay IDE installed in Eclipse Helios you can check for updates to pull down the new release.  If you are has Eclipse Indigo installed, here is the stable update-site URL for Indigo:

http://releases.liferay.com/tools/ide/eclipse/indigo/stable/

The detailed installation guide for Liferay IDE can be found here.  However, it has not been updated with the latest URLs for installing 1.3 but you can use either of the URLs above depending on your Eclipse version.

http://www.liferay.com/documentation/liferay-portal/6.0/development/-/ai/installation

Liferay IDE 1.3 New and Noteworthy

Here are some of the important features that have been released for this release:

• Eclipse Indigo support
• Remote Liferay Server support for deployment, debugging, etc. 
• New Service Builder Editor 
• Vaadin projects now supported for 6.0.x SDKs
• Required deployment context support (More info in upcoming blog)
• Alloy Taglib support
• Better support for Liferay Plugins SDK in workspace

I will be blogging more about each one of these new features in more detail in the days to come.  If you have any installation or upgrade issues please ask me over in the Liferay IDE forums. 

Good luck!

Just a quick note Liferay IDE users who are wanting to upgrade to Eclipse Indigo.  At the moment the stable version of LIferay (1.2.3) does not support Eclipse Indigo.  However, the next version of Liferay IDE (1.3) that is due to be out next month does support Indigo.  If you want to upgrade to Eclipse Indigo now and continue to use Liferay IDE you will need to install the development build (nightly) of Liferay IDE built for Indigo which can be found here:

http://releases.liferay.com/tools/ide/eclipse/indigo/nightly/

Since this is a nightly build it will be subject to frequent changes over the next few weeks as the 1.3 release is completed but it should be ready for everyday use in its current state.  If you run into issues be sure and either post a question on the Liferay IDE forums or create an issue on the Liferay IDE JIRA project.

Good luck with Eclipse Indigo!