Is there a Maven plugin or similar tool that can configure a running Tomcat server?

Question

My organization wants to put "configuration" of the container (such as JMS resources and datasources) into source control. I'd like haven Maven be able to execute this as a goal. This isn't far from the underlying ideas behind liquibase, where you can update your schema with mvn liquibase:update.

I'd like something that could be like:

mvn container:config -Pdev

and it would go out to the dev server and perhaps add a datasource to the server.xml. Bonus points if the solution is portable across GlassFish.

Anyone know of a tool like this?

Answer 1

No, there does not appear to be a ready-made tool that does this. You probably will have to do something with Maven Antrun Plugin that executes a script to logon to the Tomcat server (i.e. via ssh) and manipulate the server.xml file directly.

I might use a combination of Ant SCP Task and XML Task

Answer 2

If you want to put run-time configuration under version control consider using tools like:

• Puppet
• chef

It's possible to use Maven to run your deployments, but you'd be better advised to deploy your application to a Maven repository (like Nexus) and then download from there during deployment. That way you avoid re-compiling your code everytime you want to install your application.