First, the goal. The goal is to have a EAR, and within that EAR to have root WAR who's docroot is outside of the deployment.
This will allow me to redeploy the EAR easily without risking obliterating the content stored in the docroot.
So, simply, I want to have an EAR where the root content is served in some specified, chosen installation location, that is seperate from where the EAR is normally deployed.
Certainly, any other WARs in the EAR will be mapped to their respective context roots, but those are standalone wars.
I tried this is a simple WAR:
<property name="alternatedocroot_1" value="from=/* dir=/tmp/vstest">
<description>/tmp/vstest</description>
</property>
But, the "/*" path is obviously relative to the context root, not the server root.
So, I next changed to <context-root>/</context-root> in the WAR.
This works, it serves up a x.jsp from /tmp/vstest.
However, when I create the file WEB-INF/tags/mytag.tag in /tmp/vstest, and add a call to mytag in the JSP, it dies with an NPE from the JSP compiler. I don't know if this is a bug or not (but I filed one anyway -- 3210)
Now, there is the virtual sever docroot that exists. (Taken from a default install)
[code]
<virtual-server hosts="${com.sun.aas.hostName}"
http-listeners="http-listener-1,http-listener-2" id="server"
log-file="${com.sun.aas.instanceRoot}/logs/server.log"
state="on">
<property name="docroot" value="${com.sun.aas.instanceRoot}/docroot"/>
<property name="accesslog" value="${com.sun.aas.instanceRoot}/logs/access"/>
<property name="sso-enabled" value="false"/>
</virtual-server>
[/code]
I use that in another instance for simple static content, and it works fine.
I also tried my Tag file experiment, and it worked fine as well.
My question is this:
Is the VS docroot just simply a webapp? An exploded WAR?
What hierarchy is it loaded under? I'm assuming that if I deploy an EAR with some EJBs, then the docroot WAR (for lack of a better term) can not see any local EJBs deployed in that EAR? That it can only see Remote EJBs?
But, in theory, I can mark my EJBs somehow to "pass by reference" (something like that) so that same JVM remote calls are effectively local calls, just using a different interface (BeanRemote vs BeanLocal).
That seems to me like a nice panacea, simply leveraging the docroot of the VS. It would be nice if I can have an embedded WAR in my EAR, but this is a decent enough workaround.
So, will this work? More specifically, is it DESIGNED to work like this? Can I treat the VS docroot as a "free" WAR, where I can put things in the proper places (WEB-INF/classes, WEB-INF/web.xml, etc.) Can I rely on this behaviour (so it won't blow up and vanish when y'all hit b53 or whatever and finally get around to "fixing" something).
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