Discussion topic#1: App Servers

Hello,

This is just a note to start some discussion on the mailing list as to 
what people out there think SmartFrog needs in terms of Java application 
server support in the next year.

Currently we have:
  -Abstract webserver, app server components with Webapp, WAR and EAR 
components that can be deployed into any app server

  -A Jetty component that hosts webapps and WAR files in-process. I use 
this a lot and am very happy with it.

-A cargo component (http://cargo.codehaus.org/) that aims to use Cargo 
as an app server component. Cargo itself knows how to start, stop and 
configure various things (jetty, JBoss, orion, oc4j, resin). This is 
very raw right now and probably doesn't work yet.

-A tomcat component that doesnt start or stop tomcat, but can 
deploy/undeploy WAR files by sending GET requests to the tomcat manager

-A third-party JBoss component that I think uses shell scripts to 
start/stop JBoss.

I believe JBoss, Tomcat and Geronimo now do deploy-by-copy, in which the 
act of copying an artifact to a deploy/ dir is enough to get it 
deployed. So we could have one component,

DeployByCopyAppServer  extends AppServer {
   destDir TBD;
}

This would hot-deploy to any of these servers if correctly configured.

We are also looking at what it would take to focus on JBoss and do 
something really good there
  -start stop JBoss in different configurations "default", "minimal", etc.
  -dynamic creation of JBoss service .xml files, the ones that just 
declare/configure some JBoss stuff, and, when copied to a deploy/ dir, 
start or stop that particular instance
  -maybe JMX management for detailed control (very long term)

What do people think we should focus on?

Who has been doing app server deployment and which components have they 
been using? Does anyone have any existing components/test code to 
contribute, or is willing to help on bringing the Cactus component up, 
working on a JBoss-specific one or otherwise getting involved in the 
Application Server configure/deploy problem

-Steve







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