[jboss-dev] Deployment chains

I'm currently working on tidying up the deployers in JBoss5 as part of that I'm adding some JMX operations so you can query the deployer chains. The initial simple list (it doesn't look very good without the css which you get from the jmx console:-) is attached. A quick scan of this shows some funny things or at least some misunderstanding of the relative ordering parameter. The relative order parameter only applies when the deployers have similar input/outputs. It's there for when you have multiple "filter"s. i.e. a deployer that has the same input/output type and you need to control the order in which the filters run (you should try to design away such a requirement if possible). e.g. VFSClassLoaderClassPathDeployer is a filter it inputs and outputs ClassLoadingMetaData. So does the ClassLoadingDefaultDeployer. 1) Webservices org.jboss.wsf.container.jboss50.deployer.WebServiceDeployerPreJSE org.jboss.wsf.container.jboss50.deployer.WebServiceDeployerPostJSE Currently the ordering of these is pretty weak. i.e. there is no guarantee the PRE will run before the POST, except that the relative order of PRE is -1 compared with Tomcat and the POST must run after Tomcat. This is very brittle to changes in the Tomcat Deployer which might move it earlier in the chain due to changes in its requirements. i.e. The TomcatDeployer takes some additional metadata beyond JBossWebMetaData. Shouldn't the PRE deployer also output JBossWebMetaData to show it modifies or process it and therefore MUST run before Tomcat? 2) AOP ClassLoading A similar criticism applies for the AOPClassLoaderDeployer This has no chain definition at all? Only a relative order based on the main classloader deployer. Again this is brittle to a refactoring of how the classloader deployer works. 3) SEAM org.jboss.seam.integration.microcontainer.deployers.SeamWebUrlIntegrationDeployer doesn't specify any output. But I don't know where the source is for that? My guess is that this should really be in Describe and specify an output of ClassLoadingMetadata since that is where classloading dependencies should be constructed. 4) WEB CLUSTERING org.jboss.web.tomcat.service.deployers.ClusteringDependencyDeployer I don't know what this is doing in Describe since it is not establing a deployment dependency. Instead it is modifying the JBossWebMetaData. I'd guess this should be after the merge of annotations into that metadata? Although I don't think there is such an annotation currently? :-) 5+) There could be others. Like I said this is just a quick scan. TODO I'm going to be adding some other queries so you can display individual metadata chains for an attachment type and graphs so can see where attachments may have orginated from other attachments. Additionally you'll also be able to see deployers that were used for an individual deployment (including by subdeployment/component). Any other ideas? -- xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Adrian Brock Chief Scientist JBoss, a division of Red Hat xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx