Simplifying the deployment model

[David Oren]

I'm currently looking into a way of simplifying the Geronimo deployment process and making it more friendly to a web-developer used to working with Tomcat or Apache.

The way many developers work with Tomcat is by working directly in Tomcat's webapps folder -- it's easy, it's quick, and in many cases it's good enough. If the application needs to be moved to another server, you copy the tree structure to the new server, and you're done.

Geronimo, on the other hand, follows the J2EE deployment model: applications have to be packaged in special files, and deployed to the server. This breaks the more intuitive Tomcat and Apache development cycle. Of course, once an application is deployed, its files can be modified in Geronimo's config-store -- but while finding the correct directory there is easy, it is not trivial. In addition, you still end up with having two versions of the application, one in the directory where you originally put it, and another in the config-store.

What I'd like to suggest is adding the ability to "deploy" directories -- that is, instead of having to package an application in a war or ear file and then deploying that file, the deployer will be given the full path where the application is located. The application will be added to Geronimo, will not be copied to the config-store directory (which will contain only the .ser files) and instead, will be run from its current directory.

I have a very early proof of concept that enables this feature for web applications, and I can post it if there's any interest.

I'd be happy to hear any comments on this idea, and also suggestions on what you think will be the cleanest way to go about implementing this.

Thanks,

David Oren