Deployment of portlets - custom descriptors

[nilsga]

Hi!

I've just looked into deploying JSR168 portlets to JBoss Portal, and from the documentation, I can see that I need two custom descriptors in my portlet application. I find it strange that I need these descriptors to specify the instances of the portlet, and on which page and where on the page it should be placed. I feel that this is more of a portal administration question, and not something that should be the responsibility of the portlet? Is there a way to not include these descriptors, and configure instances and placement via the portal administration instead?

Nils-H

[swisst]

The way I understand it is that these files are completely optional. All of what is done in these files can be done through the Admin portal.

With that said, we really like defining these files. It means we can drop our application in on any JBoss portal server and have it configured for us. Our layout is pretty static and it's the only way I know of to manage the configuration and easily duplicate the configuration through our environments (dev, qa, uat, prod).

[nilsga]

Thanks, I found the administration for these operations now. I just read the chapter about portlet deployment, and got the impression that they were required.

[claprun]

Could you point out exactly which chapter you are referring to?
http://docs.jboss.com/jbportal/v2.6.4/referenceGuide/html/xmldescriptors.html#descriptors_portlet is pretty explicit on the fact that these descriptors are optional...

[nilsga]

I was following the tutorials in the reference guide: http://docs.jboss.com/jbportal/v2.6.4/referenceGuide/html/tutorials.html#d0e2127

The chapter you pointed was pretty clear, so thanks for pointing that out.

[claprun]

Maybe it should indeed made clearer in the tutorial that the descriptors are optional.

[pmn92]

The documentation does not tell what descriptors are optional and what descriptors are mandatory?

Descriptors is a solution to automating the deployment, the problem is that these are read and written to the database at every start of the server.

If descriptors are not mandatory then it could build a war to deploy/update and a war to "run". Could you tell what files are optional?

Thanks

[swisst]

All JBoss descriptor files are optional. If it's not part of JSR 168, you don't have to have it.