I'm new to this repository, I already installed it and it is working fine on Ubuntu 14.04. Now I want to personalize it and I've found everywhere that to avoid losing your customizations, you should place them in [dspace-source]/dspace/modules/xmlui/src/main/webapp/themes (I'm choosing xmlui since that is the interface I'm using and themes because that is the only customizations I want to do for now) and then you should do a mvn package from [dspace-source]/dspace for it to apply the changes to the installation directory ([dspace]). I have done this but the new theme I created doesn't appear in the installation directory. Should I do an ant update after the mvn package? Am I missing something for the documentation?
Thanks for the help!
You are correct. mvn package will build the code in dspace-source/target. ant update will copy the code from dspace-source/target to your installation directory. The maven build is generic and does not know your configuration settings. The ant task will read your configuration settings (which contain the install path).
After running ant update, you should restart tomcat.
Because the maven/ant cycles can take some time, I will occasionally make changes to uncompiled files (xsl, js, css) on the source branch and then copy them directly to the install branch.
Beware of making changes directly in the install branch since it is easy to overwrite with the ant command.
The cocoon layer of XMLUI does cache some files. If you make a change and it does not seem to take effect, sign in with an admin login and go to Administrative->Java Console->Clear Cache to force a change to be reloaded.