On 22/01/2015 16:07, Greg Wilkins wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> we've had a jetty user question that came up that we thought we new the
> answer for sure.
>
> They have a jar file which contains a META-INF/resources directory in
> which they have a WEB-INF/classes directory.
>
> Our understanding of META-INF/resources is that it is only for static
> content that can be obtained via getResource and that it is not a place
> where you can put things like WEB-INF/classes and expect them to appear
> on the context classpath.
Agreed completely.
> Our thinking is that if you allow META-INF/resources/WEB-INF/classes,
> then surely you would have to allow META-INF/resources/WEB-INF/lib,
> which could then contain jars that contain
> META-INF/resources/WEB-INF/lib, which contain jars that contain.... and
> it is turtles all the way down.
Indeed.
> We were pretty sure this is correct, but have been told that tomcat at
> least is putting META-INF/resources/WEB-INF/classes on the contexts
> classpath.
Hmm. I was going to say "no way" but I guess it is possible this is
happening accidentally. I'll check and I'll be blocking it if it is.
What Tomcat has added is a non-specification compliant extension that is
disabled by default that will look for WEB-INF/classes/META-INF and
treat that as if it were from a JAR. The use case is IDEs that unpack
JARs in to WEB-INF/classes rather than keeping them as JARs in
WEB-INF/lib. The extension enables the application to get at the static
resources that would have been in the JAR had the IDE not unpacked it.
You could, if you really wanted to, configure Tomcat to map a
META-INF/resources/WEB-INF/classes resources dir in a JAR to
WEB-INF/classes in the web application but again that would be extra,
Tomcat specific configuration.
> We can't see anything in the spec that suggests that
> META-INF/resources/WEB-INF should be scanned for classpath components.
Agreed. The spec could be a little clearer but the intent is certainly
clear. META-INF/resources is only for static content.
> You can see the original question and our response
> here:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28078902/jetty-8-can-a-web-fragment-jars-meta-inf-resources-web-inf-classes-directory/
>
> So I think we need to clarify the spec on this point one way or the other.
+1. The text referencing static reosurces in A.3 of the 3.1 spec should
really be in the main body of the spec.
I'll get back to you shortly on Tomcat's current behaviour.
Mark