How to create gwt plugin easily pluggable in an existing project without recompile?

I have created a sort of CMS with GWT. This CMS has several widgets that can be used to create pages.

I want to allow my users to create their own widgets written in GWT. The hard part is to integrate this plugin to the existing CMS without recompile (and if possible, without relaunching the server).

I've seen this post several years ago : Is it possible to create dynamically pluggable GWT widgets/portlets in separate war files?

but it was asked when GWT was in version 1 and not 2 (and this post has no good answer !). With version 2 of GWT, there are several new concepts like generators (but it needs to compile again).

Any idea how to achieve that ?

Solution

GWT is finally compiled to javascript. Since you want to avoid compilation, your GWT modules will have to communicate as pure javascript code.

But since GWT produces obfuscated JS, you will not be able to call GWT Java methods by their native names. In order to make this work, you will need to "export" the method as described here: http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/doc/latest/DevGuideCodingBasicsJSNI.html#calling

Also you'll need to come up with an API so that new modules can register themselves, so that the main code knows they are there to be used.