[Yanel-dev] redeploying WARs fully automatically

[Guillaume Déflache]

Michael Wechner schrieb:
> Guillaume Déflache wrote:
>> Hi!
>>
>> At lunch we discussed what still prevent Yanel webapps to be 
>> redeployed fully automatically.
>>
>> A few things we could think of:
>> - WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties file which ATM use absolute paths 
>> for the various log files
>> - WEB-INF/classes/realms.xml which must point to at least one custom 
>> realm: ATM we do that using an absolute path
>>
>> We thought we could maybe use the servlet context temporary 
>> directory[1] to store the realms.xml file itself or even the path 
>> under which it may be found.

One argument in favor of storing the path itself: if you have many 
custom realms it may get tedious to reconfigure all of them by 
recreating the whole XML file: better keep realms.xml in a safe place!


> Btw, the realms.xml path is already configured within 
> local/apache-tomcat-5.5.20/webapps/yanel/WEB-INF/classes/yanel.xml

Yes, and that's why as explained during lunch we might even want to use 
that for yanel.xml instead of realms.xml! ;)


> re the working/temp dir I guess you mean with
> 
> File dir = (File) getServletContext()
> 
>     .getAttribute(
>     "javax.servlet.context.tempdir");
> 
> 
> right?

Yes.


>> I am not so sure it's a good idea since it looks like this directory 
>> may be deleted without notice: the application may be unable to 
>> restart automatically if this happens... :/
> 
> if the paths of the realms are wrong within classes/realms.xml then it 
> doesn't start either ;-)

Yes, but then the adminstrator can only blame himself for that, whereas 
we may not want to trust what the servlet engine and/or the operating 
system does with the work directory...

BTW I had a look at what a Cocoon 2.1 application stores there and there 
are only cache files, no configuration.


> I think the question is what situations is this directory deleted.
> 
> Let me give it a try ...

Good luck! :)


> Cheers
> 
> Michi
> 
>>
>> Ideas?
>>
>> Cheers,
>>   Guillaume
>>
>>
>> [1] defined in the servlet specification since v2.2: 
>> http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Servlets/servletapi/ 
>> look for "javax.servlet.context.tempdir"
>> Tomcat configuration: 
>> http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/config/context.html look for 
>> "workDir" there
>