Hello,

I am looking into making webapp-config Java-aware. While there are quite a few
things that would need to happen from both the w-c and Java ends, it definitely
seems plausible.

The first step is to develop a directory structure for Java webapps that
supports virtual hosts and plays nice with GLEP 11. All four J2EE/servlet
engines currently in Portage (tomcat, jetty, resin, and jboss) implement this in
their own way:

- tomcat stores webapps in /var/lib/tomcat-5/{vhost}/webapps. There is
  one "default" vhost.
- jetty stores webapps in /opt/jetty/webapps. There is currently no
  vhost hierarchy, although I believe it should be easy to create one under
  /opt/jetty/webapps/{vhost}
- resin stores webapps in /opt/resin/webapps. There is currently no
  vhost hierarchy, although I believe it should be easy to create one under
  /opt/resin/webapps/{vhost}
- jboss is less straightforward. It appears that webapps go into
  /var/lib/jboss/{all,default,minimal}, but I'm not sure what the difference
  between those three directories is or how vhosts are handled.

I propose to add a Java-specific directory under /var/www/{vhost}, such as
/var/www/localhost/java (perhaps there is a better name than java?). This
directory could be symlinked from the tomcat/jetty/resin/jboss locations, much
like what tomcat already does. This would have the benefit of keeping everything
related to one vhost (statis HTML, servlets, CGI scripts, etc) in one location.

Comments and suggestions (esp. from Java folks) are welcome. I would
particularly like to figure out what to do with jboss.

-- 
Renat Lumpau
all things web-apps
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