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Mockito is a mocking framework that tastes really well. It lets you write beautiful tests with clean & simple API. Mockito doesn't give you hangover because the tests are very readable and they produce clean verification

XStream is a simple library to serialize objects to XML and back again. Features Ease of use. A high level facade is supplied that simplifies common use cases. No mappings required. Most objects can be serialized without need for specifying mappings. Performance. Speed and low memory footprint are a crucial part of the design, making it suitable for large object graphs or systems with high message throughput. Clean XML. No information is duplicated that can be obtained via reflection. This results in XML that is easier to read for humans and more compact than native Java serialization. Requires no modifications to objects. Serializes internal fields, including private and final. Supports non-public and inner classes. Classes are not required to have default constructor. Full object graph support. Duplicate references encountered in the object-model will be maintained. Supports circular references. Integrates with other XML APIs. By implementing an interface, XStream can serialize directly to/from any tree structure (not just XML). Customizable conversion strategies. Strategies can be registered allowing customization of how particular types are represented as XML. Error messages. When an exception occurs due to malformed XML, detailed diagnostics are provided to help isolate and fix the problem. Alternative output format. The modular design allows other output formats. XStream ships currently with JSON support and morphing.

"what if I just dropped the EMF bundles into the same place, modified the demo .plan file to include them, and.. No way that could possibly work, right? Not only did it work, but it actually worked before I thought it would. I was ready for endless rounds of editing, rebuilding, restarting, reloading, re.. But instead, I saved the changes to the .plan file and Equinox/Virgo automagically hot-loaded them and ran through the dependencies there and then. I cleaned a couple of things up, and then I navigated to the URL, and there it was. Seriously, I haven't been that impressed by a technology that "just worked" since the first time I built an EMF model and editor. I'll say it: The Virgo/RAP/EMF stack is going to be -- already is -- a kick-ass combination. Light-weight development, light-weight deployment, industrial strength, web-based MDSD."

The packaging type eclipse-repository was originally introduced for building products that can be updated with p2 (cf. TYCHO-188). This requires the following build results: a p2 repository which contains the product IU, and a zip file with the installed product. (Although this is technically no longer needed since the Update Manager was replaced by p2, zip files are still the primary way to distribute Eclipse/RCP installations.) For ease of implementation, this was done in the same packaging type eclipse-repository. In the meantime, eclipse-repository has gained in capabilities (in particular through TYCHO-491), making it difficult for users to choose the right packaging types. This page lays out the mid-term plan of how we want to build products, update site categories, and p2 repositories in Tycho. It also contains a few details how the transition todays (0.11.0) packaging types (eclipse-repository, eclipse-application, eclipse-update-site) to the new types eclipse-repository and eclipse-product.

Does it all make sense now? Do you know how to solve every problem? Probably not, but when it comes right down to it, using Java EE can be even simpler than using Spring, and take much less time. You just have to find the right guides and the right documentation (which is admittedly a severe sore-spot of Java EE; the documentation is still a work in progress, but is getting much better, save blogs like this one.) You have to turn to a vendor like JBoss, or IBM in order to get the use-case driven documentation you need, and they do have documentation, it's just a matter of finding it. Seam 3 in particular strives to give extensive user-documentation, hopefully making things much simpler to adopt, and easier to extend. The main purpose of this article was not to bash Spring, although I may have taken that tone on occasion just for contrast and a little bit of fun. Both Spring and Java EE are strongly engineered and have strong foundations in practical use, but if you want a clean programming experience right out of the box - use Java EE 6 on JBoss Application Server 6 - JBoss Tools - and Eclipse. I will say, though, that the feeling I've gotten from the Spring forums vs the Java EE forums, is that there are far many more people willing to help you work through Java EE issues, and more available developers of the frameworks themselves to actually help you than there are on the Spring side. The community for Java EE is much larger, and much more supportive (from my personal experience.) In the end, I did get my application migrated successfully, and despite these issues (from which I learned a great deal,) I am still happy with Java EE, and would not go back to Spring! But I do look forward to further enhancements from the JBoss Seam project, which continue to make developing for Java EE simpler and more fun. Don't believe me? Try it out. Find something wrong? Tell me. Want more? Let me know what you want to hear.