[jboss-as7-dev] deployment options

[Brian Stansberry]

There's nothing not production-worthy about using the deployment scanner 
and our docs shouldn't imply it's not ready for production use.

What the scanner is is a task that periodically runs and monitors a 
filesystem dir for changes. When it detects changes it invokes 
operations against the server management API to trigger content upload 
and deployment. It invokes the same operations that can be invoked quite 
directly via the CLI or a bit less directly with a GUI via the console.

The CLI can be used to accomplish the same thing, and with the advantage 
that the operation is synchronous -- the command is invoked and the 
result is known when the command returns. The command can be executed by 
a human and the result read, or it can be scripted with the script 
checking the result. Contrast this with copying a file into the 
deployments dir, waiting some semi-random period of time until the next 
scanner run, and then trying to figure out what happened from looking at 
logs or the marker files in the deployments/ dir.

In short, using the scanner can be more convenient and has less of a 
learning curve, since copying a file to a dir is trivial for anyone, 
while using the CLI makes it easy to have greater control. Typically the 
"convenience and low learning curve" aspect is more important in a 
developer environment, but that doesn't mean people won't prefer the 
scanner in a production environment.

An important thing to realize with the scanner though is if you use the 
scanner, your API for managing those deployments becomes the OS's 
filesystem API. Users shouldn't try to then manipulate the deployments 
via the CLI or console. The web console isn't going to let you update or 
remove the deployments -- you need to manipulate the deployments/ dir.

On 4/23/12 1:28 AM, Heiko Braun wrote:
>
> FYI, can anyone on this list respond to dave?
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> Hi Heiko,
>>
>> I've been following various discussions about the deployment scanner
>> and the content repository for a while, and it doesn't seem like
>> there's a clear answer. What do you think about it?
>>
>> I've seen people asking on Stack Overflow whether they are safe to use
>> both deployment methods, and I know that I've laid some foundations to
>> the docs by suggesting that the scanner is a developer tool, and not
>> for production. This surprised some of our consulting team recently,
>> who suggested that customers will use the scanner for app deployments
>> in a production environment.
>>
>> Do you have any thoughts on this?
>>
>> Dave
>
>
>
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-- 
Brian Stansberry
Principal Software Engineer
JBoss by Red Hat