Embedding JBossAS 7.1.x in an Eclipse RCP application

[sfcoy]

And now for something completely different:

We have a requirement to deliver our web application as a standalone offline solution. Previously, we had been delivering a custom Eclipse RCP application for this purpose. However maintaining this in step with the webapp has become quite onerous.

It occurred to me that I should be able to run an embedded version of JBoss in an Eclipse RCP shell, in conjunction with the Eclipse internal browser.

I've managed to bootstrap a prototype that almost works using the jboss-as-embedded library and friends.

However, jboss-modules is playing havoc with RCP's XML parsers, as it clobbers the various javax.xml.parsers.* system properties with classes that are inaccessible to the RCP framework.

I've tried adding jboss-modules.jar to the bootclasspath, but it contains some static initialisers that don't cope with being in the root classloader (Main.class.getClassLoader() returns null).

Does anyone have any suggestions to get around this, or do I have to fork a separate java process?

Thanks

[jaikiran]

I'll move this to our JBoss Tools forum where users familiar with Eclipse RCP might be able to help.

[sfcoy]

I've managed to get past the xml parser issues for the most part by managing the initialisation of the module loader myself.

I then had to do some particularly nasty stuff with reflection to get the java.net.URLStreamHandlerFactory for VFS working.

The end result is that I have our webapp running self contained in an Eclipse RCP application, using the built-in eclipse browser to render it's gui.