users@glassfish.java.net

Missing deployment feature?

From: Vince Kraemer <Vince.Kraemer_at_Sun.COM>
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:00:34 -0800

Hi,

I was reading through
http://wiki.glassfish.java.net/Wiki.jsp?page=V3DeploymentImprovements
and thought that there was feature that I have heard folks talk about,
that doesn't appear on the list...

I don't even know what it had been called, so I will make up a name and
describe it, to see if someone has more info about it and its fate...

I will call the feature: disjoint enterprise application deployment.

The basics of this feature would be the ability to "deploy" an
enterprise application by pointing to a set of disjoint jar files or
"exploded module" directories

here's a 'for example':

say I have a web module that I have created in /space/webs/WebApp1...
it has a build directory /space/webs/WebApp1/build/web.

I also have an ejb-jar module that i have created in
/space/beans/EjbJar1... it has a build directory
/space/beans/EjbJar1/build/jar

    In both cases, the content of the build directory conforms to the
layout requirements of the packaged archive (war or jar).

What i would like to be able to do is tell GlassFish...

    Hey, "deploy" an ent app, that consists of the following directories
(that contain classes and jsps and html files and etc. etc. etc.)

Please don't make me do all the extra packaging/copying to:

1. create a "proper" ear file, OR
2. copy all the build directory content into a directory to construct an
'exploded ent app' that would be acceptable to GF v2.

I envision an asadmin command that would look something like this

   asadmin deploy --treat_as_ear=true directory1..N archive1..N

or in the 'for example' that I started above...

  asadmin deploy --treat_as_ear=true /space/webs/WebApp1/build/web
/space/beans/EjbJar1/build/jar

Note: eliminating the packaging steps may seem like a small gain, but I
have worked with folks that have MASSIVE (250 MB through 2 GB)
enterprise applications where even these simple optimizations are HUGE.