Now you know how to extend Alfresco without getting your files tangled up with the core distribution. But what is the best way to package them up and deploy them to the server? Most people choose Ant to build and package their customizations. Once they are packaged, you have three options for deploying them as part of the Alfresco web application:
Copy your files on top of an exploded Alfresco web application.
Integrate your files with the Alfresco WAR, which you then deploy.
Package your changes as an Alfresco Module Package (AMP) file. The AMP is then installed in—merged into—an Alfresco WAR, which is then deployed to the application server.
The first two approaches are self-explanatory. Copying custom files into an exploded Alfresco web application is the least trouble of the three. It is fast, and makes for a very efficient development cycle. A common approach is to use an Ant build file to zip everything into an archive, and then unzip the archive...