UserConfig options

[Joel Johnson <jo...@ischool.washington.edu>]

I am setting up tomcat 5.5 on a server to be used by multiple users and have 
run into a few issues, most of which I have found mentioned in archived 
messages as problems, but no solutions presented. I'm hoping to get a feel 
for the latest status of the issues, and find out if there are plans to work 
on them.

Per the subject, I am using UserConfig with the HomesUserDatabase userClass to 
enable each user to have a discrete public_webapps directory. It appears as 
though that mechanism only supports one webapp per user, as tomcat searches 
for ~/public_webapps/WEB-INF/web.xml directly. Is it possible to allow each 
user multiple webapps so that tomcat serves requests for 
~username/{webapp1,webapp7}/ from ~/public_webapps/{webapp1,webapp7}?

The previous question is likely related to my next question, which is the 
problem I have with a user's public_webapps directory being created *after* 
tomcat has started. Tomcat only appears to scan at load instead of request 
(ala Apache, etc) requiring a restart of tomcat. Presumably it is because of 
this one-scan approach that multiple webapps per userdir aren't supported, 
but I would love to know otherwise. Is the option to scan on request in 
development, or is there some other reason why it is unfeasible?

Another issue is whether it is possible to autodeploy WARs in a user's 
~/public_webapps ? Unpacking the WAR works as expected, but it would be nice 
to have WARs unpacked (even if only one webapp is supported). Am I missing 
something and this is possible, or am I ahead of myself?

A final question is more of a feature request - it would be great to be able 
to enable a limited manager interface for each Userdir, something like 
http://hostname:8080/~username/manager, where each user can manage their (and 
only their) apps, upload new WARs to deploy, etc.

Any responses or ideas for any/all of these issues would be appreciated.

Joel Johnson

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