Two modest proposals about common\lib

[Benson Margulies <bi...@basistech.com>]

Based on all the recent traffic from people tying themselves into
pretzels with global resources, I have two concrete ideas. I would try
to concoct patches (at least for the first) if there was tentative
acceptance for either.
 
1) Configure the 'common' classpath in an editable location. By default,
this path would be the current set of common directories. However, an
admin could add additional directories shaped like common.
 
This would be an improvement in administration. As things are, if I want
to distribute/deploy common resources, I have to mix my stuff in with
the standard stuff. A new release of Tomcat requires me sort it all out
over and over. It would cleaner if I could keep 'my' stuff off in
separate directories, and just configure it into Tomcat. If I had
multiple packages from multiple sources that needed to go into common, I
could keep them separate.
 
2) Some sort of optional classpath conflict checker. Many people seem to
get into deep trouble by ending up with copies of 'the same thing' in
both a webapp class path and the common class path. I'm thinking of an
off-to-one-side tool that would inventory the contents of a webapp, and
check for conflicts with common, and report them. Perhaps this would be
a candidate for merely 'contrib' status if someone coded it.

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Re: Two modest proposals about common\lib

[Remy Maucherat <re...@apache.org>]

Tim Funk wrote:

> I've been pondering something similar. (I just never got around to 
> vocalizing it) My preference is to introduce common/usr_lib (and 
> server/usr_lib)(This name is horrible, but you get the idea)
>
> The usr_lib dirs would be in the same classloader as common/lib (or 
> server/lib) and would contain user specific jars. This way users would 
> not have to add/change jar files in common/lib when upgrades occur.

More problems, more confusion. Bad idea.

People can use the properties file to tweak the classloaders if they 
need it.

Rémy


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Re: Two modest proposals about common\lib

[Tim Funk <fu...@joedog.org>]

I've been pondering something similar. (I just never got around to vocalizing 
it) My preference is to introduce common/usr_lib (and server/usr_lib)(This 
name is horrible, but you get the idea)

The usr_lib dirs would be in the same classloader as common/lib (or 
server/lib) and would contain user specific jars. This way users would not 
have to add/change jar files in common/lib when upgrades occur.

-Tim

Benson Margulies wrote:
> Based on all the recent traffic from people tying themselves into
> pretzels with global resources, I have two concrete ideas. I would try
> to concoct patches (at least for the first) if there was tentative
> acceptance for either.
>  
> 1) Configure the 'common' classpath in an editable location. By default,
> this path would be the current set of common directories. However, an
> admin could add additional directories shaped like common.
>  

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