Your Own Projects

It is not necessary to load an build your own copy of the base JA-SIG cas3 project in order to develop your own WAR or even your own Java code. The JA-SIG artifacts are deposited in central libraries and can be downloaded by Maven as dependencies. So unless you intend to change any of the JA-SIG source, you could just create your own projects.

However, the various JA-SIG optional source projects provide excellent examples to follow when you create your own code projects, and the cas-server-webapp project provides a good model to use for your own WAR project.

If you used only the Maven build process, you can use the WAR Overlay project layout. You create a project that depends on the cas-server-webapp WAR artifact and contains only the configuration files and JSP pages you have modified. Maven reads in the vanilla WAR artifact, replaces files with the modified copies you provide in the project, and then creates a new WAR artifact that you can deploy on your local servers.

However, you cannot use the Eclipse integrated J2EE debugging unless you create a complete modified copy of the cas-server-webapp project with all the files, because Eclipse doesn't have a WAR Overlay model of doing business. Create your own J2EE WAR project, copy over the files from the JA-SIG cas-server-webapp project, make changes, associate the project with a server, and debug stuff. Note that when a dependency of this project is not associated with a code project elsewhere in the same working set, then the Build Path will show that JAR file as an ordinary dependency in the Maven Dependencies list of downloaded libraries instead of listing it as a project in the Web App Libraries.