[opencms-dev] Module deployment with Eclipse-Plugin: how to make changes in opencms-system.xml?

[Sebastian.Wiemer at Bertelsmann.de]

Hi, 

when developing an OpenCms module with the Eclipse Plugin, the
deployment of the module is error prone, because it is easy to forget to
add collectors, handlers or Widgets in the opencms XML configuration
files. Not only it is easy to forget, it is also very hard and tiresome
to automate. In a typical "test / stage / live server" environment we
made an approach with XSL transformations adding/removing/updating the
necessary changes. It proved to be useful, but was limited to servers
where the ant scripts doing the transformations, had access to the
filesystem, where the opencms config files were stored. Usually the live
server will not be accessible in that way. The XLS transformations
itself on the other hand, were more on the simple side.

Wouldn't it be nice to automatically make those changes in an install
class?
I think the "initialize" method which is called on module installation
would be a good starting point.
But I found no examples whatsoever showing how to add, change or delete
a single line in the XML configuration.

So here is my question in short: Does anyone know a good example how to
make changes to the config files throuth the module installation
mechanism?

best regards,

Sebastian