> Yeah, its interesting question, maybe for Tomcat developers to come up,
> besides its marked as FIXME to add some info about the way mod_webapp
> work behind the scene. :))
>
> but:
>
> RELEASE-NOTES-4.0-B7.txt
> ---------------------
> Tomcat 4.0 and Apache:
> ---------------------
>
> The binary distribution for Tomcat 4.0 includes the most recent stable version
> of the WARP connector, which is the Tomcat component that talks to mod_webapp
> inside Apache 1.3. The current state of this support is summarized as follows:
>
> * The mod_webapp connector is configured based on the contents of the
> web.xml file for your web application. The only required per-webapp
> configuration information in your Apache 1.3 httpd.conf file is
> something like this:
>
> WebAppDeploy examples warpConnection /examples/
>
> which causes mod_webapp to automatically recognize all of your servlet
> mappings, security constraints, and other configuration elements.
>
> * Currently, mod_webapp forwards *all* requests under the specified
> context path to Tomcat for processing. When Tomcat 4.0 final is released,
> it will automatically configure itself to serve static resources
> from Apache *unless* the resource is subject to filtering, or subject
> to a security constraint, as defined in web.xml. No extra configuration
> in httpd.conf will be required.
I cannot fathom how they plan to do that, since it would violate the view of a "web
application" as a sealed component on the "servlet container". I mean suppose you have
a WELCOME.GIF file in your web application, how is Apache supposed to serve it, other
than through WARP? Pre-caching of all static content upon "Warp Deployment"?
Or perhaps, not pre-caching, but just simple caching? Man, that is dangerous. Suppose
I keep my GIFs in database and I upload new GIFs. OK, OK, perhaps it is not a good
idea to remap *.gif to a servlet, since browsers might cache it, too.
Anyway, a web application with a whole lot of static content might need some
re-modeling?
> and:
>
> RELEASE-NOTES-4.1-dev.txt
> ---------------------
> Tomcat 4.0 and Apache:
> ---------------------
>
> The binary distribution for Tomcat 4.0 includes the most recent stable version
> of the WARP connector, which is the Tomcat component that talks to mod_webapp
> inside Apache 1.3. The current state of this support is summarized as follows:
>
> * The mod_webapp connector is configured based on the contents of the
> web.xml file for your web application. See the documentation included
> with the connector for configuration requirements.
I guess they realized that they cannot even make a promise on that.
Whatever happened to Pier Fumagalli (if I remeber the name correctly)? He was the main
man behind mod_webapp. Last I heard, he was looking for a new job.
Nix.
