Liferay IDE portlet changes not synchronized on the server

Platform

• Liferay 6.2 EE Tomcat bundle deployed locally
• Liferay 1DE - various version in the past 1 year
• Liferay 6.2 EE plugins SDK
• JDK 6 or 7
• Mac OSX or Windows

Problem

We run into an issue intermittently with the Liferay IDE where a portlet java class changes are do show up the Tomcat server.

The setup is as follows:

• A portlet is deployed on the server and is also configured to publish and synchronize on the local server (by drag and drop).
• Any changes saved to any of the java class result in a expected publish to the server automatically without a need to do a ant deploy/ Liferay -> SDK -> deploy.
• These changes can be seen in the browser after the publish
• Intermittently, this automatic publish sync of the java classes does not work and the changes can't be seen in the browser.
• Stopping and starting the server seem to have no effect.

Has anyone see this behavior?

The problem above happened to a few of my team members local Liferay environments.

I have been able to work around this by following the steps below:

• Undeploy the portlet by removing the portlet from the Tomcat home/webapps/ folder
• Stop the Tomcat server Liferay IDE
• Cleanup the temp folder under Tomcat home/tmp/ folder related the portlet in question
• Start the tomcat server via the Liferay IDE
• Deploy the portlet to the Tomcat server

The publish sync process seems to start to work after these steps.

I am not sure if there is a better solution.

Hope this helps someone.