Re: File locations: EAR, WAR, XML datasource
Marcus Better wrote:
Daniel Pocock wrote:
JBoss and Tomcat detect new deployments automatically.
It probably doesn't make sense to auto-deploy a new webapp to all installed
servers. Probably the user wants to select which server to deploy to,
similar to the traditional installation where the servers have separate
directories.
An option would be to install webapps in a shared directory
like /usr/share/java/webapps, but _not_ configure app servers to use this
automatically. Instead we can provide an option in /etc/default/jboss etc
to auto-deploy from the shared directory (off by default).
Ultimately, here is the use case I am looking at:
- a user decides they want a particular package (e.g. xwiki, a WAR file)
- they type apt-get install xwiki
- the package depends on other packages: j2ee-war-container and
jdbc-driver, and it recommends relational-database
- apt satisfies those dependencies by installing Tomcat, MySQL JDBC
driver, and MySQL server
- during the xwiki package installation, the install script sees that
the MySQL JDBC package is installed, and it offers to create a
datasource for that driver (and create a database too) - the user
accepts this option
- finally, the user is told that their Tomcat may require a restart
Now let us consider one modification to this use case: the user already
has JBoss installed. In this case, JBoss already satisfies the
dependency j2ee-war-container, so apt doesn't try to install Tomcat.
I realise that there are users who want much more control over their
application servers - I am one of them. Nonetheless, I think that what
I'm proposing is feasible, even if it may take a little thought and time
to fully implement. If Debian provides this infrastructure, then there
is a real possibility that vendors will want to release their products
on Debian, as the users will deploy them more easily.
Also, there is no need for any of this to be mandatory - for instance,
the user would still have the option of manually installing JDBC driver
JAR files, and manually configuring the application server to create a
datasource.
Datasource creation is server specific - but maybe we can offer a
generalised approach, and each packaged application server can
(eventually) provide a script to implement it?
Regards,
Daniel
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