[jboss-as7-dev] Branding/Product JAR & Console Impact

[Jason T. Greene]

In order to make it easier for multiple products (EAP/SOA-P/etc) to 
consume the same common AS source code, we need to implement a 
plugability mechanism that allows version numbers, branding 
skins/themes, logos, etc to be easily replaced (preferably using a 
single jar).

The mechanism would involve supplying some kind of an argument to the 
bootstrap. For example:
java -jar \"$JBOSS_HOME/jboss-modules.jar\" \
        <snip>
        org.jboss.as.standalone
        -Djboss.brand.module=org.jboss.as.project-brand

We would then provide some API to get the module so that it can be used 
to launch services and/or perform resource loading.

The most complex piece is probably the console branding. I haven't 
looked in detail at the static console layout. Are things separated 
enough that we can easily redefine images, text etc for branding? 
Ideally we would break anything that would be replaced into a separate 
console/branding/foo.jpg|html resource. Then the server can redirect 
resource requests with that directory to branding module resource loading.

-- 
Jason T. Greene
JBoss AS Lead / EAP Platform Architect
JBoss, a division of Red Hat