We are working on migrating an OpenCMS website from one look to another. As expected of all development projects, this cannot be done on the production server, so we are setting up a development environment for the site within our local network.

While the basic tools have become better, Java and Tomcat seem faster than when I had a version 4 of each, it seems like OpenCMS and maybe other Java applications are still mired in the past. Setting up a PHP based CMS, Joomla or WordPress (have not used Drupal) are straight forward, migrating from one server to another is as simple as copying the files, updating the database, and poof ur off.

OpenCMS, is a totally different beast all together, it is not clear what is stored on the file system and what is stored in the database, and even when you get a strange error like

ERROR [.workplace.CmsWorkplaceManager:1288] Error reading view folder: [B@111ad13/
org.opencms.file.CmsVfsResourceNotFoundException: Error reading resource from path "/[B@111ad13/".

You are left wondering where the hell do I find the missing file or resource for one Google is no help either. Nothing is clear with Java, and Java based applications.

The hair pulling goes on, and one wonders whether I will be bald by the time this is fixed.