Which Vaadin archetype for making an add-on (client-side development)?

Question

For some client-side development in Vaadin Framework, such as implementing a column-renderer, which of the two archetypes should I be using?

• com.vaadin:vaadin-archetype-addon
• com.vaadin:vaadin-archetype-widget

The latter has current versions numbers matching those of the Vaadin Framework. And the latter is listed in the Maven page of the Vaadin site. So I guess I will go with that one. One reservation: The description as seen in the screen shot below reads "Vaadin 7" but I am using Vaadin 8.1.3.

What is the other archetype for? Is it outmoded now?

Answer 1

The reason's to use com.vaadin:vaadin-archetype-widget are:

1. As you already mentioned, this listed in the maven archetypes page of the Vaadin site.

2. It is upto date till now. At least last update to maven central was on 30 Aug, 2017.

3. Creating a project out of this archetype builds successfully without any further changes to the basic project which is expected of any archetype while deriving a project. I could further package the add-on to be uploaded as well. Version 8.1.3 of the archetype does indeed build and run successfully with Vaadin Framework 8.1.3.

On the other hand, the com.vaadin:vaadin-archetype-addon archetype definitely seems outdated for few inverse reasons:

1. A simple search on maven central tells you that it was last update on 10 May, 2011.

2. Attempting to create a project out of it seems to be relying on a pom structure unknown, in my case the relative.ParentPath was not found and moreover after fixing these, there were certain packages in the java classes generated that were not defined.

Both these certainly mean there's no one maintaining this archetype.