Customer requested feature is ability to externalize a file from a
deployment archive and have it be an addition to the files in the
archive or to override an existing file. Use cases:
1) Production: can't crack the deployment archive for policy reasons,
but need to change some config. So they add an override deployment
descriptor. This AIUI is the customer requested use case.
2) QE: override the production config to make some settings match the QE
environment.
3) Dev: same as QE, but to match the dev environment.
The original idea we had for this can be seen in the structure of a
deployment=foo.war resource in the management API. It has a "content"
attribute of type LIST. The LIST was to allow multiple pieces of
content, the first being the archive, the rest being overrides. That's
"approach 2)" in Stuart's original email in this thread.
The new proposed approach (Stuart's "1)") is to have an entire new
resource type, peer to deployment=foo.war, called dd-override=x. That
resource would include attribute deployment=foo.war used to associate
the override with a particular deployment.
Both cases, the override descriptor would need to be uploaded to the
server and stored in the data/contents dir, just like a deployment. I
Either way, the user would need to use some sort of tooling to do the
upload and associate the override descriptor with a deployment.
Stuart's approach 1) is more deployment-scanner friendly. The user does
whatever to get the override uploaded and registered. The scanner
uploads the archive and tells the server to deploy it like it does now,
and doesn't need to know anything about overrides. With approach 2) the
scanner really can't handle it; it has no way to know two separate files
it finds in the deployments/ dir are associated with each other.
What I'm looking for is some perspective on how JBoss Tools would deal
with this kind of feature.
On 4/4/12 8:24 AM, Max Rydahl Andersen wrote:
Hi brian,
> Max, any thoughts on this subject? I think a tooling perspective is critical here.
I'm trying to decipher the real question but seems i'm missing some context ;)
Care to give a summary/hint ?
/max
>
> On 3/29/12 6:50 AM, Emanuel Muckenhuber wrote:
>> On 03/29/2012 05:12 AM, Stuart Douglas wrote:
>>>
>>> On 28/03/2012, at 5:48 AM, Emanuel Muckenhuber wrote:
>>>> The part i am trying to figure out is that we basically would have 2
>>>> things doing the same. Another issue people are complaining about is
>>>> that we don't support symlinks in .war deployments. One of the
easiest
>>>> ways to solve this would be to just mount a local file system path.
>>>> Where i am not sure if moving this to the dd-overrides makes more sense.
>>>> Hopefully i do remember correctly that we support VFS in our web
>>>> integration :)
>>>>
>>>> I think the dd-override sounds like less work in the beginning, but if
>>>> you include invalidation of overrides i am not sure if that is also true
>>>> for all the tooling. The deployment-scanner seems to be an edge case in
>>>> general, so perhaps we it can just adapt (be smarter) once we have some
>>>> other workflows.
>>>>
>>>
>>> I don't know if invalidation of the overrides is really that much of a
problem. If you have to specify the overrides at deployment time then you need to make
sure your environment is setup so that you will always provide that override file whenever
you deploy, which means that for developers they would need tooling support, and for
production they would need to have their deployment scripts setup to make sure that the
override is always deployed with the deployment. Both of these use cases will still work
with dd-override (i.e. you can just have tools or scripts to modify it every time before
deployment).
>>>
>>
>> Hmm, redeploying works through the :replace operation, which should
>> allow you to replace a single content-item, but preserve exiting ones.
>> So you would also have to provide it only once.
>>
>> But yeah, once you call :remove it would also invalidate all the
>> overrides. However the lifecycle seems more straightforward and there is
>> the option that you just disable the deployment as well.
>>
>> I do see that this does not work that well for the deployment-scanner,
>> but then there is no deployment-scanner in the domain. So for me that is
>> more an issue of the scanner and should perhaps better be solved there.
>>
>> Emanuel
>>
>>> If on the other hand these descriptors only change infrequent, then
dd-override has a major advantage, in that it can just be setup once and then left alone.
>>>
>>> Stuart
>>>
>>>
>>>> On 03/27/2012 08:04 PM, Brian Stansberry wrote:
>>>>> It's not immediately critical. But a little voice inside my ear
tells me
>>>>> we'll be *strongly* pressured to support it at some point. People
love
>>>>> the deployment scanner. And I think once people get used to being
able
>>>>> to have override descriptors they will love that as well.
>>>>>
>>>>> Override descriptors are very nice for keeping a base deployment but
>>>>> adapting it for different environments. I'd thought of it as more
of a
>>>>> production thing (a workaround to a corporate policy that says a jar
>>>>> can't be cracked open and change) but David convinced me it's
more of a
>>>>> developer or staging thing (override the production settings with
>>>>> dev-workstation-specific settings). And once you are talking
developers,
>>>>> you are also talking deployment scanner.
>>>>>
>>>>> A big question I'd like to see talked through on this thread is
how best
>>>>> to do tooling around this (including CLI and web console.)
What's
>>>>> easiest for the user, in common workflows?
>>>>>
>>>>> In option 1, the dd-override is a separate resource from the
deployment.
>>>>> That means it can be independently controlled. Good and bad there.
Good,
>>>>> it can be added once and then left alone while the war, whatever is
>>>>> tweaked and redeployed many times. Bad, it's a separate thing.
>>>>>
>>>>> Conversely, with 2, the content items are part of a list attribute
of
>>>>> the deployment resource. The good and bad points are the opposite of
1.
>>>>>
>>>>> On 3/27/12 12:47 PM, Emanuel Muckenhuber wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hmm, so we really have to support the deployment-scanner use
case? I
>>>>>> mean beside some API/address differences - the (not implemented)
>>>>>> deployment content thing is basically doing the same. Just
wondering if
>>>>>> i missed something obvious?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 03/27/2012 03:55 PM, Brian Stansberry wrote:
>>>>>>> On 3/27/12 12:34 AM, Stuart Douglas wrote:
>>>>>>>> We have had a few requests for the ability to override
deployment descriptors without having to open up a deployment archive and manually change
the descriptor. I think there are two different approach that we can use to accomplish
this, and I am was wondering what other people thought.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 1) Allow the user to specify alternate deployment
descriptors as part of the deployment process
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> At deployment time the user would be able to select
specific deployment descriptors to override. I don't really like this approach, as it
means that this information must also be provided on every re-deployment. It is also not
really compatible with the deployment scanner, and would require changes to every client
that does deployment to properly support it.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 2) Allow the user to specify deployment descriptor
overrides before a deployment takes places. These descriptors would be stored in the
content repository, and the corresponding information in the model. When a deployment is
performed that matches the deployment name in the model the deployment descriptors from
the content repository are merged into the deployment.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> e.g. to add the descriptor you would do something
like:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
/dd-override:my-deployment-descriptor:add(deployment="test.ear",
file="test.jar/META-INF/ejb-jar.xml", content=…)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> or for domain mode
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
/server-group=foo/dd-override:my-deployment-descriptor:add(deployment="test.ear",
file="test.jar/META-INF/ejb-jar.xml", content=…)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> For domain mode, this should be basically a parallel to the
existing
>>>>>>> deployment=* handling:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> a) The override is a top level resource, adding an item to
the
>>>>>>> "pallette" that is usable in any server-group:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
/dd-override=my-deployment-descriptor:add(deployment="test.ear",
>>>>>>> file="test.jar/META-INF/ejb-jar.xml", content=…)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> b) The server-group part is just a mapping that says
"use this from the
>>>>>>> pallette:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> /server-group=foo/dd-override=my-deployment-descriptor:add
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Actually, this last bit is probably unnecessary, since the HC
can figure
>>>>>>> out what dd-overrides are required from the
deployment="test.ear"
>>>>>>> attribute on the dd-override=my-deployment-descriptor
resource.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Then when test.ear is deployed the contents if the
overridden deployment descriptor will be override test.jar/META-INF/ejb-jar.xml.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> 2) is the approach that I prefer, as I think it gives the
most flexibility.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> What does everyone think?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Stuart
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>>>>>>>
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>
> --
> Brian Stansberry
> Principal Software Engineer
> JBoss by Red Hat