On May 19, 2009, at 12:42 PM, Bill Stoddard wrote:
Lin Sun wrote:
One quick way would be allow users to start a tomcat server from a
geronimo tomcat javaee5 assembly or little G tomcat assembly(say
geronimo.sh start tomcatOnly=true). It is possible to just launch
the tomcat server, and read the configuration files (conf/server.xml,
etc) and start a tomcat server from a geronimo tomcat assembly, by
using the Catalina.java provided by tomcat. But this server/app
would have no relationship with geronimo, other than using the jars
provided by the geronimo tomcat assembly. The deployed app would be
tracked only by tomcat, and not by geronimo. We should be able to
achieve this without adding any new jars.
If we need more than that, I can for seen the following issues that
need investigation -
1. We'll have to provide better server integration with tomcat and be
able to read the server configuration from tomcat's server
configuration files, along with using config.xml configurations.
This would be an absolute minimal requirement. Would this be really
difficult?
2. We'll have to migrate user's app automatically for the user, when
the user's app is a bit complicated that contains any need to require
a geronimo-web.xml
This is where things get more interesting.... lots of permutations
and edge cases to consider.
I'm not enough of a tomcat expert to know exactly what information a
server.xml contains so I'm not quite sure how much the following makes
sense.
I think I would approach this by building a namespace aware builder
that can interpret documents following the server.xml schema and
construct the entire tomcat server from it. In other words, instead
of starting with our current tomcat6 plugin, the builder would
construct a replacement for it from the server.xml. If server.xml
contains info on apps that are deployed in the tomcat instance, this
could perhaps hook into or extend the current TomcatModuleBuilder to
also set up plugins for each web app involved.
The first part here might not be too hard. IMO if we treat the
server.xml as a geronimo plan that would be acceptable. I'd recommend
trying jaxb rather than using xmlbeans. I don't know how practical
this would turn out to be but it's worth starting with.
I personally think this is too large an addition to plan to get into
2.2. However if a motivated person shows up with something working
before we solve the other problems I think we could consider it. 2.2
is already so much later than we had planned I don't want to hold it
up for any new features after the other problems have been solved.
thanks
david jencks
Lin
On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Bill Stoddard
<[email protected]> wrote:
I know G can't consume tomcat configs today, but is this a feature
that
could be developed for G 2.2?
Say I have an application successfully deployed and running under
Tomcat..
wouldn't it be nice if I were able to drop the tomcat server
config into a
Geronimo-Tomcat assembly, start the server, deploy the app and be
up and
running in seconds. I'm talking about a seamless, zero effort/
zero touch
migration from Tomcat to a Geronimo-Tomcat assembly. Is it
possible? If
not, what simplifying assumptions could be made to 'mostly'
achieve a
zero-touch migration?
What are the primary challenges with consuming a tomcat config
unchanged
with a G-Tomcat assembly? Same Q's apply for Jetty... what's
'doable'
with-in reason?
Thanks,
Bill
