Support for web application overlays in rapid application development (jetty:run)

Same problem with jetty-jspc. When a JSP of the main artifact includes another JSP from the dependent WAR, jspc complains about file not found. war:inplace is not a proper solution because of the mess in source tree.

I'm also in need for this on the xwiki build. Right now this is preventing us to use this little wonderful jetty plugin...

I'm attaching a patch that sets up jetty:run with a Jetty6WebAppContext who's getResource method is overridden.

The new getResource method first checks if the Resource returned by super.getResource() exists. If it doesn't, then the webApp directory is checked for a resource with the same uriInContext.

I'm not familiar enough with Jetty's inner workings to tell if this will work in any and all cases, but I've tested it with JSPs and static files included in the dependent webapp and that seems to work fine.

Vincent, perhaps you could expand a bit on what kind of resources you're using from the dependent webapp and how you access them in XWiki? And if you find time to test this patch that would be really cool.

Hi Eirik,

Thanks for the patch (which I'll try later on today if you can confirm it solves some of my needs I have defined below).

Here's my set up:

• I have a maven2 module (let's call it XE) that generates a WAR
• This XE module depends on another WAR (let's call it platform web). This platform web WAR contains lots of JARs and resources (Velocity template files)
• The XE module simply overlays the platform web and injects some configuration files using the <resource> element in the WAR plugin configuration

Here's my need:

• If one of the JAR contained inside the platform web WAR is modified then it should be reloaded automatically (this could happen through checking the local repository for changes)
• If a resource file (the Velocity template files) contained inside the platform web WAR is modified then it should also be reloaded automatically

Are any of these needs solved by your patch?

Thanks a lot
-Vincent

Have a look at http://docs.codehaus.org/display/JETTY/Multiple+WebApp+Source+Directory
Let us know if that works for you.

Hi David,

Thanks for working on this.

No this wouldn't work because each maven module is independent of the others and can be located anywhere and at different locations on each devleoper's machines. They need to remain independent. The only way to exchange information between them should be through the local repository.

Thanks

Vincent,

That could easily be done through a maven ant plugin that extracts the war from your repository to target/app_name during the generate-sources phase. Then you could configure jetty-maven-plugin based from the wiki I posted above.

Cheers

David,

I believe this won't work when jetty:jetty is already started. Ideally what I'd need is to run jetty:jetty once and then one of the dependent artifact is modified have jetty reload it automatically.

It's also more complex to set up than having the jetty plugin doing it.

Thanks

I meant jetty:run and not jetty:jetty

Vincent,

So you're saying that when webappB's files are modified, webappA will have to reload automatically.
This wont be possible as you've to do a mvn install from your webappB so that it gets installed in your maven repository then jetty will be able to pick up the change.

Note that this is how its done with regular jar files. If you have a dependency on project A(jar A), it points to the jar installed in your repo. So you'll have to mvn install your projectA so that jetty will reload.

In the case of a webapp, the dynamic reloading happens since target/classes is scanned. You also have the options to add extra scan targets.

Cheers

Yes I would expect to do a mvn install. BTW this will be done automatically for me if I use Eclipse and m2eclipse for example.

The extra scan targets don't work since they have to be paths.

available for both jetty 6 &7

Any dependency on a war will activate the overlay.
e.g
<dependency>
<groupId>org.dojotoolkit</groupId>
<artifactId>dojo-war</artifactId>
<version>1.2-SNAPSHOT</version>
<type>war</type>
</dependency>

For more details, see http://docs.codehaus.org/display/JETTY/Multiple+WebApp+Source+Directory

Cheers,
dyu

David,

I'm using Jetty 7.0.0.pre5 and try to setup an overlay between 2 war maven projects. The project A has the web.xml file. Project B does not. Project B has a Project's A dependency in its pom file. When I try to run project B with jetty:run the overlay works but I'm getting:

[ERROR]

The following mojo encountered an error while executing:
Group-Id: org.mortbay.jetty
Artifact-Id: jetty-maven-plugin
Version: 7.0.0.pre5
Mojo: run
brought in via: Direct invocation

While building project:
Group-Id: com.test1
Artifact-Id: TestC
Version: 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
From file: /Users/mpk35/workspace/ProjectB/pom.xml
Reason: web.xml does not exist at location /Users/mpk35/workspace/ProjectB/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml

I'm wondering if there is anything which could be done to fix it. I would like to avoid coping the web.xml to Project B
thanks!

Currently implementation of the overlays have been unobtrusive wrt the other parts of the plugin.
I'll take a look if this improvement can be unobtrusively implemented.

Cheers

Thanks David!