NiFi Front End Development

[Alex Aversa <al...@gmail.com>]

Hello,

I am interested in doing some front-end work on Apache Nifi. I am currently
trying to figure out the best practice to setup the project such that I can
change the front end files (*.css, *.js,  etc) in the nifi-web-ui component
and have them sync in the Jetty web container in near real time. Currently,
I've have been forced run the "package" maven build in the nifi-web-ui
component and that is requiring me to wait approximately 20 seconds while
it re-packages all the front-end files prior to copying them out to the
Jetty container and be able to view my changes. It appears the "package"
step is aggregating multiple source files into  common files with a custom
naming convention, preventing any simple direct copy of these static files
from the project into the Jetty container when working on the UI. I wanted
to know if anyone is aware of a setting I can tweak in the project that
makes the project go to a "development" mode where it skips the source file
aggregation and renaming step prior to generating the war file for the
Jetty container and ultimately keeps the nifi-web-ui maintains the same
source structure in the web container? If anyone has any insight/guidance
on if this is possible, it would be a huge help on this end. Waiting 20
seconds to view minor changes to static files is an exercise in frustration
I'd like to avoid. My maven is rusty at best, so the solution didn't seem
very apparent to me when I looked at the *.pom files. Many thanks in
advance for any assistance you can render.

Take care,

--Alex