Blog example in 2.0.0CR2 fails under Tomcat

[robjellinghaus]

I have Java 1.6.0_03. I can build Seam 2.0.0CR2 without difficulty (Maven 2 fires right up and seems to pull everything). I can then "cd examples/blog" and "ant tomcat.deploy". I take jboss-seam-blog.war from the place it puts it, and drop it into my actual Tomcat 5.5.12 webapps directory, and launch Tomcat.

And boom:

[main ] 2007-10-29 22:38:37,515 INFO HostConfig:783 - Deploying web application archive jboss-seam-blog.war
[main ] 2007-10-29 22:38:37,968 ERROR [/jboss-seam-blog]:3643 - Error configuring application listener of class com.sun.faces.config.ConfigureListener
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: javax/el/CompositeELResolver
 at java.lang.Class.getDeclaredConstructors0(Native Method)
 at java.lang.Class.privateGetDeclaredConstructors(Class.java:2389)
 at java.lang.Class.getConstructor0(Class.java:2699)
 at java.lang.Class.newInstance0(Class.java:326)
 at java.lang.Class.newInstance(Class.java:308)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:3641)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.start(StandardContext.java:4127)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChildInternal(ContainerBase.java:759)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.addChild(ContainerBase.java:739)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.addChild(StandardHost.java:524)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWAR(HostConfig.java:804)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployWARs(HostConfig.java:693)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.deployApps(HostConfig.java:472)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.start(HostConfig.java:1118)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.HostConfig.lifecycleEvent(HostConfig.java:310)
 at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleSupport.fireLifecycleEvent(LifecycleSupport.java:119)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1020)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHost.start(StandardHost.java:718)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.start(ContainerBase.java:1012)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.start(StandardEngine.java:442)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.start(StandardService.java:450)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardServer.start(StandardServer.java:680)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Catalina.start(Catalina.java:536)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.start(Bootstrap.java:275)
 at org.apache.catalina.startup.Bootstrap.main(Bootstrap.java:413)
[main ] 2007-10-29 22:38:38,015 ERROR [/jboss-seam-blog]:3650 - Skipped installing a
pplication listeners due to previous error(s)
[main ] 2007-10-29 22:38:38,015 ERROR StandardContext:4128 - Error listenerStart
[main ] 2007-10-29 22:38:38,015 ERROR StandardContext:4153 - Context [/jboss-seam
-blog] startup failed due to previous errors


According to good old FindClass, the missing class is in el-api.jar and jsp-api.jar, neither of which are built into jboss-seam-blog.war. So it makes perfect sense that it can't be found.

Are all the examples being regressed under Tomcat?

I'll now look into how to hack the build to get those jar files into the Tomcat war. One thing about the new centralized build, it makes it harder to tweak the examples :-\

Will file a JIRA momentarily.
Cheers,
Rob

[robjellinghaus]

Whoops, sorry for the bad markup in last post. JIRA has been filed:

http://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBSEAM-2183

Cheers,
Rob

[robjellinghaus]

Aah, rats. So it looks like now JBoss Embedded has to be installed manually under Tomcat before any Seam examples can be deployed there?

http://wiki.jboss.org/wiki/Wiki.jsp?page=EmbeddedAndTomcat

This is a pretty big drag, since it means that I can no longer publish a Seam-based example as a single WAR file that anyone with Tomcat can drop into their webapps directory.

Is there any history or other information on why this change was made? Seems like a pretty sizable regression from 1.2.0, where "ant deploy.tomcat" would create a .war that contained all the necessary embedded pieces. Is there any way to get back to that nice simple deployment model?

As it is, it makes Seam examples vastly harder to publish and share. Which affects me personally, since I am trying to update http://unrealities.com/seamgwt for Seam 2, and if I have to tell people to muck about with JBoss Embedded in order to test this little example, I lose the majority of developers who'd otherwise try it.

Depressed,
Rob

[pmuir]

You've got two options:

1) If you want to write an app which JEE capabilities, tell people to get JBoss AS 4.2 - you just unzip it, start it up, and drop in your seam app. The download size will be about the same as Tomcat + Embedded + Your app.

2) Convert your app to not use JEE, but just JPA and deploy to plain tomcat (for an example see the jpa example, you still have to copy quite a few dependencies to Tomcat like javassist)

[pmuir]

And yes, you're not the only one who feels this is regression, we had a lot of complaints around the time of the first beta which used Embedded JBoss rather than Embedded EJB3.