For pay docs

[bmelloni]

I have a couple of questions about for-pay documentation.

1) Does buying the paper book give you access to PDF versions and more importantly - updates?

2) If yes, and I buy book for 4.0 version, would the documentation updates be available for all of the 4.x releases or only for a year?

3) How frequently is the for-pay documentation updated? Does it keep pace with changes to the server?

I am obviously considering buying the for-pay docs for 4.x, but I don't want to waste my money on something that will be obsolete within months. As an example, I noticed a change in classloader behavior after 3.2.3 that made some features no longer work by 3.2.6, but the free documentation did not get updated. So I am stuck at 3.2.3 and unable to upgrade. Annoying as hell.

If I buy the 4.0 docs, I would expect to be able to get current and accurate documentation updates when a later 4.x version make changes that require me to change my configuration. Is this how things work with jBoss, or is it just wishful thinking and not worth spending the money?

[darranl]

http://www.jboss.org/docs/index

I think the important line is 'All documentation is now free.'

[norman.richards]

The only "pay" documentation is the upcoming SAMS print edition of the JBoss Application Server Guide.

[bmelloni]

I hope free does not mean *out of date* after a few months. I'd be happy to pay for the guarantee of always having up-to-date documentation.

jBoss' habit of improving without preserving backward compatibility gives us great a great product, but it sure causes a lot of pain.

[norman.richards]

Why don't you take a look and report back what you think.

[bmelloni]

I read the 4.0 docs (every single one of them) trying to resolve my classloader issue with 4.0.1SP1.

It has a very clear and well written section (a bit hard to find, but it is there) on how to configure 4.0.1 for J2EE 1.4 compatibility and "separate classloading".

Unfortunately, when I followed the instructions and deployed a test EAR that works on 3.2.3 and contains a different version of log4j.jar and commons-logging.jar from the one in jBoss, it experienced a conflict - a clear failure to isolate the class loading. Note that the test app did not even use log4j, it just had the jars present in web-inf/lib.

This is the kind "documentation out of date" issues that I was referring to.

[bmelloni]

Note: this classloading problem was solved in the production version of 4.0.2.