[gentoo-dev] Sowing the seeds of a warconfig tool

[gentoo-dev] Sowing the seeds of a warconfig tool

[m h]

Hey folks-

(Shamelessly copied from my blog[1]  )...
I'm working on an open source tool for managing war files called
warconfig (warconfig is/should be to wars as webappconfig is to php
apps). We have a need for this at work. I have a pretty detailed write
up here [2]. Warconfig is a tool for deploying, upgrading, and rolling
back war files on Tomcat (currently only version 5.5 on Gentoo has
been tested, though with a little love it should work on Windows and
anywhere else that tomcat does. Support for additional app servers
should be pretty easy to implement).

The coolest feature, (which is still in the process of being
implemented), will allow one to easily see what has changed between
war file versions (think CONFIG_PROTECT for files within wars). (Say
you have a configuration file containing data specific to your
deployment, such as jdbc connection parameters. This will allow you to
quickly validate if you've updated your files).
(end cut)

I realize that as of now there aren't many wars in the ebuild tree.
But I suspect that will change soon with the recent pushes by the java
herd.

I'd like to solicit any feedback from the webapp-confiig, *-config and
java people.  (Or anyone who has j2ee deployment experience).  If
people are interested in helping, let me know and I'll create a
project with source control and all that good stuff.  If the
gentoo-java people are interested, I'd like to work with them to get
this to be a defacto tool for gentoo (if not that's ok too, I still
need this for work).

I'm going to be asking for feedback in some non-gentoo places as well,
so if you have comments could you be so kind as to post them to my
blog[1]?

thanks much for your time,

-matt

[1] - http://panela.blog-city.com/warconfig__feedback_requested.htm
[2] - http://developer.spikesource.com/wiki/index.php/Article:Warconfig
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Sowing the seeds of a warconfig tool

[Renat Lumpau]

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On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 01:48:50AM -0600, m h wrote:
> Hey folks-
> 
> (Shamelessly copied from my blog[1]  )...
> I'm working on an open source tool for managing war files called
> warconfig (warconfig is/should be to wars as webappconfig is to php
> apps). We have a need for this at work. I have a pretty detailed write
> up here [2]. Warconfig is a tool for deploying, upgrading, and rolling
> back war files on Tomcat (currently only version 5.5 on Gentoo has
> been tested, though with a little love it should work on Windows and
> anywhere else that tomcat does. Support for additional app servers
> should be pretty easy to implement).

Have you looked at Cargo? http://cargo.codehaus.org/

-- 
Renat Lumpau       all things web-apps
C6A838DA           04AF B5EE 17CB 1000 DDA5  D3FC 1338 ADC2 C6A8 38DA

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Sowing the seeds of a warconfig tool

[m h]

On 8/4/06, Renat Lumpau <rl03@gentoo.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 01:48:50AM -0600, m h wrote:
> > Hey folks-
> >
> > (Shamelessly copied from my blog[1]  )...
> > I'm working on an open source tool for managing war files called
> > warconfig (warconfig is/should be to wars as webappconfig is to php
> > apps). We have a need for this at work. I have a pretty detailed write
> > up here [2]. Warconfig is a tool for deploying, upgrading, and rolling
> > back war files on Tomcat (currently only version 5.5 on Gentoo has
> > been tested, though with a little love it should work on Windows and
> > anywhere else that tomcat does. Support for additional app servers
> > should be pretty easy to implement).
>
> Have you looked at Cargo? http://cargo.codehaus.org/
>

I figured I'd get this question.  i briefly played with cargo.  (In
fact I'm planning on asking the cargo people for feedback as week).
Perhaps if one are interested in manipulating wars from ant/maven,
cargo is the way to go.  But cargo didn't provide any commandline
interface, and I'm not doing anything (currently) that requires having
access to the java api of the containers.  I'm basically
copying/symlinking files.  (It could be done with a shell script, but
that would make it harder to maintain (IMO) and not work on windows
(without cygwin, which isn't really an option for me)).

I really prefer scripting in python to java (though if cargo really is
the way to go, my code just needs a few changes to run under jython).
Or I could port it to java...

> --
> Renat Lumpau       all things web-apps
> C6A838DA           04AF B5EE 17CB 1000 DDA5  D3FC 1338 ADC2 C6A8 38DA
>
>
>
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Sowing the seeds of a warconfig tool

[Renat Lumpau]

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On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 10:10:00AM -0600, m h wrote:
> On 8/4/06, Renat Lumpau <rl03@gentoo.org> wrote:
> >On Fri, Aug 04, 2006 at 01:48:50AM -0600, m h wrote:
> >> Hey folks-
> >>
> >> (Shamelessly copied from my blog[1]  )...
> >> I'm working on an open source tool for managing war files called
> >> warconfig (warconfig is/should be to wars as webappconfig is to php
> >> apps). We have a need for this at work. I have a pretty detailed write
> >> up here [2]. Warconfig is a tool for deploying, upgrading, and rolling
> >> back war files on Tomcat (currently only version 5.5 on Gentoo has
> >> been tested, though with a little love it should work on Windows and
> >> anywhere else that tomcat does. Support for additional app servers
> >> should be pretty easy to implement).
> >
> >Have you looked at Cargo? http://cargo.codehaus.org/
> >
> 
> I figured I'd get this question.  i briefly played with cargo.  (In
> fact I'm planning on asking the cargo people for feedback as week).
> Perhaps if one are interested in manipulating wars from ant/maven,
> cargo is the way to go.  But cargo didn't provide any commandline
> interface, and I'm not doing anything (currently) that requires having
> access to the java api of the containers.  I'm basically

I'm not a Java guy, so I could be off. Doesn't Cargo provide ant tasks for
manipulating containers/wars?

-- 
Renat Lumpau       all things web-apps
C6A838DA           04AF B5EE 17CB 1000 DDA5  D3FC 1338 ADC2 C6A8 38DA

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Sowing the seeds of a warconfig tool

[m h]

> > >Have you looked at Cargo? http://cargo.codehaus.org/
> > >
> >
> > I figured I'd get this question.  i briefly played with cargo.  (In
> > fact I'm planning on asking the cargo people for feedback as week).
> > Perhaps if one are interested in manipulating wars from ant/maven,
> > cargo is the way to go.  But cargo didn't provide any commandline
> > interface, and I'm not doing anything (currently) that requires having
> > access to the java api of the containers.  I'm basically
>
> I'm not a Java guy, so I could be off. Doesn't Cargo provide ant tasks for
> manipulating containers/wars?
>
Like I said, if you are interested in manipulating wars from ant or
maven perhaps cargo is for you.  I'm assumming this is more of the
programmer/qa type person who wants this sort of functionality.  My
end user is a sys-admin.  They are usually more comfortable from the
command line.

I've updated my caveats section
(http://developer.spikesource.com/wiki/index.php/Article:Warconfig )
with Cargo information.

-matt
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Sowing the seeds of a warconfig tool

[Joshua Nichols]

m h wrote:
> Like I said, if you are interested in manipulating wars from ant or
> maven perhaps cargo is for you.  I'm assumming this is more of the
> programmer/qa type person who wants this sort of functionality.  My
> end user is a sys-admin.  They are usually more comfortable from the
> command line.
>
> I've updated my caveats section
> (http://developer.spikesource.com/wiki/index.php/Article:Warconfig )
> with Cargo information.
>
Disclaimer: I'm familar with cargo because we use it at work, but not
intimately so, because I haven't been involved with the implementation
and whatnot.

My impressions of cargo is that it is supposed to be pretty container
agnostic. You mostly point it at a host, with username, password, etc,
and it'll deploy the app for you. This would be pretty nice, since you
wouldn't have to worry about the implementation details of where webapps
should live. Additionally, you could use it to build wars on one
machine, and deploy them remotely without much trouble.

So if the issue that there isn't a command line interface, perhaps it is
worth writing? Also, we could probably write a generic ant script, and
provide a scripted frontend for it to make it dynamic.

-- 
Joshua Nichols
Gentoo/Java Project Lead
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