Ari:
Good comments. I had noticed this behavior also but thought fixing it was
more a convenience item at this point and hoped these issues would be
addressed in later releases.
Kirk S. Kalvar, Software Engineer
DRS Electronic Systems Group
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ari Halberstadt [SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Friday, June 23, 2000 10:58
> To: Orion-Interest
> Subject: several questions and comments
>
>
>
> I have been using Orion 1.0 to develop an application over the last month.
> I
> like the way Orion works as a simple Java application: add a few lines to
> the
> config files, run it, and it automatically does all the deployment stuff.
> It is
> much easier to use than the other application servers I tried. Following
> are
> several questions and comments.
>
> - The load-on-startup tag in the web.xml file for a servlet does not seem
> to
> work for me. The servlet runs fine if I access its URL, but it is not
> loaded on
> startup by Orion. The web application is part of a j2ee application. What
> am I
> doing wrong?
>
> From web.xml:
>
> ...
> <servlet>
> <servlet-name>TaskLsdServlet</servlet-name>
>
> <servlet-class>com.lycos.ni.task.request.lsd.TaskLsdServlet</servlet-class
> >
> <load-on-startup>-1</load-on-startup>
> </servlet>
> ...
>
> - Automatic reloading of j2ee applications doesn't work the way I would
> expect
> it to. While developing, it is much easier to work on an expanded EAR,
> i.e., a
> regular directory hierarchy. Currently, JSP files are automatically
> reloaded by
> Orion after being edited. However, if I recompile any of my classes
> (servlets or
> EJBs) then Orion does not notice the changes. I must kill Orion (^C), then
> remove the deployment directory from the application-deployments
> directory, and
> then restart Orion. This forces Orion to redeploy the entire application,
> but is
> is slow and tedious and it only gets slower the more EJBs I add. I would
> expect
> Orion to notice the changed class or jar files and automatically reload
> them,
> similar to the way programs like Apache JServ and Resin work.
>
> - Automatic reloading of EAR files breaks if the EAR file is being written
> to.
> When Orion notices a j2ee application deployed in an EAR file has been
> modified,
> it immediately tries to redeploy the application. However, if the EAR is
> still
> being written to, then Orion reads an incomplete file and reports an
> error. It
> would be useful for Orion to wait a few seconds after the file has stopped
> changing before trying to redeploy (whether a file is "changing" can be
> ascertained by looking at its access and modification times and at its
> size and
> waiting until they do no change for several seconds).
>
> - Currently, I must add all libraries for all applications to Orion's lib
> directory. I would much rather be able to specify a classpath for each web
> application, along with a global classpath for Orion. Copying jar files
> into a
> directory is not my preferred way for loading libraries, since it means
> having
> multiple copies of jar files separate from the full set of files with
> which the
> jar file is distributed. For instance, Resin lets you specify a classpath
> for
> each application, and a global classpath can be set using the CLASSPATH
> environment variable. Orion ignores the global CLASSPATH variable when
> running
> applications.
>
> - How can I specify different config and libraries directories for Orion?
> I
> would like to keep these directories and files separate from the Orion
> distribution directory so that upgrading to later versions is easier.
>
> - Orion currently requires copying the tools.jar file from the JDK into
> the
> Orion directory. Can't Orion infer the location of the tools.jar file from
> the
> JDK's home directory? Couldn't this be specified using the system
> CLASSPATH
> rather than copying a file into Orion?
>
> - Could the mailing list be changed to include "[ORION-INTEREST]" in the
> subject
> of each message? This would make scanning for messages in my inbox easier.
>
>
>
