JBoss AS7 *.dodeploy files

Question

We package our application as a .war file, we advertise support for JBoss AS5 and instruct our clients to copy the .war into their JBoss 'deploy' directory, and start up their application server in order to deploy the .war.

We are introducing support for JBoss AS7, so our deployment instructions for AS7 will have to change to something like

-copy the application.war to $JBOSS_HOME/standalone/deployments
-touch $JBOSS_HOME/standalone/deployments/application.war.dodeploy
-start JBoss AS7

This deployent method seems awkward to me, and possibly fragile, as failure to successfully create the *.dodeploy file would cause the deploy to fail. Also JBoss startup problems may cause the deploy to fail, causing the *.dodeploy file to be renamed *.failed - so it would have to be renamed back to *.dodeploy before attempting to redeploy. We are thinking the process seems a little awkward for some of our clients, who may not be familiar with JBoss AS7.

Is there any way to automate this deployment process so that it is smoother for deployers who may not be comfortable with how things work with JBoss AS7? How are other people handling this type of situation? thanks for any suggestions.

Answer 1

There is a web interface that's fairly easy to use. You can access it after JBoss AS7 has been started by going to http://localhost:8080. There is a link on that page that takes you to the administration console.

You could also write scripts for deployments using the CLI interface. There is some information here https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/AS7/Management+Clients about how to use it.

Lastly you can always write your own Java client to deploy applications. I wrote a blog post a while back on how to write a custom deployment CLI interface.

Answer 2

If you're aware of the marker files then you might have made a conscious choice to disable the automatic deployment mode for the deployment folder, which ships enabled by default. Autodeploy is great for everything but exploded files, and removes the need to manually manage the marker files. With autodeploy enabled, you can use the "touch" command on the application itself, which will update the timstamp and trigger the application for deployment (or redeployment). So you can still script if need be, but focus on the file rather than the marker files.

Just for reference, there are five ways to deploy files, of which three will be common to the typical administration setup. These are the graphical Management Console, the Management Command Line Interface (CLI) and the deployment folder you mention. The other two are via an IDE (such as JBoss Developer Studio or Eclipse with JBoss Tools), and even via Maven.

For people that may not be comfortable with the scripting as you say, then you can't go past the Manage Deployments section in the Console GUI. The Console deployment does not move/copy the application to the deployment folder, so using both the Console and the Deployment folder can make for some effort in file management.

For bash-savvy users, the CLI is great, and is often recommended by the AS7 team as a preferred method of deploying and managing applications. The user guide section on the CLI is located here: https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/AS7/Admin+Guide#AdminGuide-RunningtheCLI.

An example of all deployment methods can be found on this YouTube video by one of the developers: "5 ways to deploy your application to JBoss AS 7". Hope that helps.

Answer 3

You only need .dodeploy for exploded deployments. If your deployment is a zipped war,ear,etc. then it will be picked up automatically.

Answer 4

Change your deployment mode from manual to auto which does this deployment automatically.

Steps :

1) Open your jboss configuration file : standalone.xml.

2) Look for deployment-scanner and add auto-deploy-zipped="true"

<deployment-scanner scan-interval="5000" relative-to="jboss.server.base.dir"
    path="deployments" auto-deploy-zipped="true" auto-deploy-exploded="false"/>

3) Restart your Jboss.

Now it will automatically pick your zipped version of ear/war/jar/sar files for deployment.

Answer 5

You can still use your old scripts without using any markers.

This can be changed in the standalone.xml by changing the "auto-deploy" attributes on the deployment-scanner element in the standalone.xml configuration file.

More details can be found in the deployments folder README.