Hi,
I have a patch for allowing easier building with web-client.
http://trac.osgeo.org/geonetwork/ticket/589
is the ticket and the patch is attached. A relatively detailed explanation is on the ticket but the big things are you can now do:
mvn install -Penv-dev,widgets
and it will build all modules and the web module will have a war that contains the web-client resources and is configured to use the widgets UI rather than the current main.home UI.
in addition running
mvn jetty:run -Penv-dev,widgets
in the web directory will pull in the resources from both web-client and web. The big benefit is the static files (javascript, css,html,config-*.xml) are read from the source directories so you can change the sources and get the updates in the UI immediately.
if the widgets profile is enabled you get access to the widgets resources and the app is configured to use widgets.
Let me know if you have any questions,
jesse