Proposal: Changing Narayana properties file default name with Narayana 6

[tomjenkinson]

Currently the default properties file name is arjuna-properties.xml unless you use one of our narayana-jt* jars where we override this default name in the manifest to jbossts-properties.xml.

With the next Major release of Narayana I would propose the following:

1. We introduce a new narayana-properties.xml

2. The narayana-jt* jars not override the properties name in their manifest but we still support that facility in case someone else is using it

3. We change the search path to look for <user-overridden-value>.xml, narayana-properties.xml, then jbossts-properties.xml and finally arjuna-properties.xml.

A good win here is that when people use the raw jars (org.jboss.narayana.jta.jta for example) then they can provide the same narayana-properties.xml as they would if they were using the uber jar (example org.jboss.narayana.jta.narayana-jta) without a system property. It should help in a Maven enabled debugger when executing applications running in integration environments like WildFly or Spring where debugging via an uber jar adds an extra layer that makes getting to the real source code harder and code fix cycle slower.

This should not pose too much of a backwards compatibility issue unless the user has multiple config files with different names (arjuna and jbossts) in their path, were only using arjuna.jar and now jbossts-properties.xml was picked up. But for this reason I propose waiting until Narayana 6.

Any support or objection?

[marklittle]

Go for it. As long as there's an option to override it for those people who prefer their own naming scheme, I think this makes sense.

[tomjenkinson]

Thanks for the feedback. I have raised [JBTM-2620] Introduce narayana-properties.xml and use as as default property file name, change search order of propertie… to track the work.

[marklittle]

I suggest adding a WARNING or NOTE in the docs to bring this to the attention of people as much as possible. At least then, with the ability to override the default, we can't be blamed for changing without letting them know

[tomjenkinson]

Good suggestion. I will make a note to do that.