Customizing deployment directory of webapps

[jgribonvald]

Checklist

• the individual contributor license agreement is signed
• commit message follows commit guidelines
• tests are included
• documentation is changed or added
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• view conforms with WCAG 2.0 AA

Description of change

This change allow to setup a custom webapps directory where to deploy all apps (uPortal and portlets).

[ChristianMurphy]

Hey @jgribonvald! 👋
Rest assured this PR has not been forgotten. 😌
Many of the uPortal committers are focused on preparation for Open Apereo 2018 right now. 🔜
More folks should be available to help with reviews after June 6.

[ChristianMurphy]

Hey @jgribonvald! 👋
Can you help me understand your intended use case for this change?
When should uPortal and the portlets be put outside the server context?

[jgribonvald]

@ChristianMurphy
Firstly this params was enable in previous uPortal version
After the need is to deploy on an other directory than tomcat sources/conf, it's really important when you want to deploy quickly a new tomcat version, with that you don't need to backup/move the webapps directory.
You have shibboleth that adopted this way, the deployment should be outside tomcat sources/conf.

[ChristianMurphy]

Thanks Julien!
The more I hear this described the more I think there may potentially be overlap with existing tomcat tasks, particularly tomcatDeploy.
What I'm trying to understand is:

• Is there a new use case that is not accounted for by the existing tasks?
• Is it somewhat covered by the existing tasks, but there is a pain point that needs to be resolved?
• Is it covered by the existing tasks, but needs better documentation on how to fulfill this use case?

Firstly this params was enable in previous uPortal version

Just because uPortal has done something in the past, doesn't mean uPortal should do the same thing now. 🙂

After the need is to deploy on an other directory than tomcat sources/conf

Would running tomcatDeploy with a different server.base handle this?

it's really important when you want to deploy quickly a new tomcat version

It is important, and uPortal start aims to provide an up-to-date and properly configured tomcat.
Properly configuring tomcat was something that was easy to mess up but not easy to debug in uPortal 4.
uPortal 5 with uPortal-start has resolved that issue with the generated tomcat.
If there is a pain point with the generated tomcat, I'd rather fix it in the generated tomcat, rather than encouraging external tomcat(s).

with that you don't need to backup/move the webapps directory.

Would auto generating a backup folder resolve this concern?

[jgribonvald]

Ok I understand all your points !

This needs is to have an other folder not depending on tomcat install and so will be outer of catalina.home and catalina.base, so it's can't be managed by server.base. In this case it's more easy to install a new version of tomcat.

After in other case it's really nice to have an easy to install of the tomcat, but their could be other apps that won't be deployed from uPortal start. Sincerely it's a better things to have a webapps directory outside of tomcat source. For my deployment case only tomcat's provided apps stay into source (as example the manager), and I deploy in all my tomcat the psy-probe app...

Also from your details I think it would be great to add a new target that will upgrade the tomcat version without modifying deployed apps directories expect those embeded into tomcat.