[jboss-dev] Problem detecting modified deployments

This would be a "Design of POJO Server" thread but forums are down so am using this broad distribution list. Those not interested in the technical details of detecting modified deployments can ignore. :) I'm looking for some input from the VFS and ProfileService folks. I'm having an issue where the ClusteredDeploymentRepository is failing to detect modified deployments. Issue leads to a failure in a newly added test[1]. What the test does is make some changes in the contents of the farm/ dir, gives time for the HDScanner to run, and then verifies that the updated content is deployed in all nodes in the cluster. Everything works fine for content additions and removals, but modifying an existing file doesn't work. Problem is in the ClusteredDeploymentRepository.createModificationInfo() method, which basically duplicates the logic in HotDeploymentRepository.getModifiedDeployments(). Loops through the VirtualFiles representing the root of known deployments, checking if they are removed, and if not, asking the StructureModificationChecker if they are modified: // Check for modification else if (hasDeploymentContentFlags(pathName, DeploymentContentFlags.MODIFIED) || getChecker().hasStructureBeenModified(root)) { long rootLastModified = root.getLastModified(); ... // Create the modification info ModificationInfo info = new ModificationInfo(ctx, rootLastModified, ModifyStatus.MODIFIED); modified.add(info); } Problem occurs in AbstractStructureModificationChecker.hasStructureBeenModified(VirtualFile): if (root == null) throw new IllegalArgumentException("Null root"); // skip vfs deployment context lookup if archive or file if (root.isArchive() || root.isLeaf()) return root.hasBeenModified(); // !!! RETURNS FALSE The problem is root.hasBeenModified() returns false. I don't think VirtualFile.hasBeenModified() is a safe way to check for modification, since following a modification, it will return true once and only once. So whatever code asks first gets "true", later code will get "false". AFAICT, this is the reason AbstractStructureModificationChecker has a StructureCache injected -- the cache stores modification timestamps to avoid this problem. Shouldn't the timestamps for archives/leaf deployments be stored in the StructureCache as well? And then check for modification using the StructureCache's data, same as we do for, e.g. a WEB-INF/web.xml? FYI, the reason that in this case root.hasBeenModified() returns false is earlier in the HDScanner run ClusteredDeploymentRepository has scanned the repository content looking for changes so it can replicate modified files around the cluster. That scan results in a call to VirtualFile.getChildren() which ends up calling AbstractVirtualFileHandler()hasBeenModified(). A final twist: While experimenting with this manually, I found that the first time I modify the file, the above problem occurs. But then if I modify the file again, it gets picked up as modified and redeployed. And thereafter, every time I modify it, it gets redeployed. Only fails the first time. I've been poking around a long time and have no explanation for why this is. [1] http://hudson.qa.jboss.com/hudson/view/JBoss%20AS/job/JBoss-AS-5.1.x-test... -- Brian Stansberry Lead, AS Clustering JBoss, a division of Red Hat brian.stansberry(a)redhat.com