Guvnor war filenames and default URL's

[kurtstam]

Hi guys, Geoffrey sent this out to the active developers who seem to gravitate to Proposition 1 (in favor of keeping things simple) However I though I'd open it up to a wider audience:

    We used to have this situation (pre split-up):

• Module drools-guvnor, type war
  • builds 1 war: drools-guvnor.war
    • Hosted mode works.
    • Non-hosted mode URL: http://localhost:8080/drools-guvnor/
• Release contains drools-guvnor.war

    After the split-up (unreleased) this changed slightly:

• Module guvnor-webapp, type war
  • builds 1 war: guvnor-webapp.war
    • Hosted mode works.
    • Non-hosted mode URL: http://localhost:8080/guvnor-webapp/
• Release contains guvnor-webapp.war

    So, what's wrong with this?

• That 1 war doesn't deploy without modification on JBoss 5 or 6
  • The modification is different between 5 and 6
• That file name doesn't have the version string (= bad practice)
  • Confusing if you download guvnor 5.0 and 5.1 and drop them into the same folder in the internal fileserver (mirror).
    • Basically you overwrite the previous one and other people might mistake it for the previous one

    Solution I've been able to do so far:

• Module guvnor-webapp, type war
  • builds 1 war: guvnor-webapp-5.2.0.war
    • This is the generic war, which is the stone out of which the specific wars are cut.
    • Hosted mode works.
    • Non-hosted mode URL: Doesn't matter, because it's not used?
• Module guvnor-distribution, type pom with a list of assemblies
  • builds several wars:
    • guvnor-5.2.0-jbossas-5.1.war
      • URL: http://localhost:8080/guvnor-5.2.0-jbossas-5.1/
    • guvnor-5.2.0-jbossas-6.0.war
      • URL: http://localhost:8080/guvnor-5.2.0-jbossas-6.0/
    • guvnor-5.2.0-tomcat-6.0.war
      • URL: http://localhost:8080/guvnor-5.2.0-tomcat-6.0/
  • Each war deploys without modification on the specific app server.

    So, what's the problem?

• The URL needs to be documented in the manual.
  • More than 1 URL, that changes per version is confusing.

    So, what's the proposed solutions?

• Proposition 1: It's fine like that.
  • People expect the URL to match the war filename.
    • It's a JEE standard. No magic happening.
    • At least they will find it like that and they can rename the file if they want a different url.
  • gdesmet: +1
• Proposition 2: Use jboss-web.xml to set the URL for all jboss wars to guvnor:
  • URL: http://localhost:8080/guvnor/
  • Problem: this is impossible to add this in the tomcat war  (there is no tomcat-web.xml).
    • The tomcat URL stays: http://localhost:8080/guvnor-5.2.0-tomcat-6.0/
      • unless they change the war filename or TOMCAT_HOME/conf/server.xml
  • gdesmet: +0
    • ok, we're giving better service to JBoss AS
      • but in total it is a step forward for the tomcat crowd as they get a specific version war
• Proposition 3: Give all wars the same name guvnor.war and use different directories.
  • Problem: this will be very confusing for both the build and the download files.
  • gdesmet: -1
    • It's making the bad practice of not including the version number even worse.

    So I am thinking proposition 1 or 2, what do you think?

Speak up now or hold your peace forever.

--K