manager app+ant bug's n' blues - continued

[jo...@fwd.at]

Hi there,

I've used the manager app to redeploy my webapps now for quite some time.
Unfortunately the list of unresolved troubles with the manager app keeps 
growing.

I am facing these problems at different Tomcat configurations, the two 
main environments are:
*) Win 2K, TC 4.1.24
*) Win NT 4.0, TC 4.1.24
*) AIX 4.3, TC 4.1.12
So I think the OS doesn't matter to this problem.

And here are the flaws which occured during usual day operations:
1.) java.lang.ClassNotFoundException:

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException:
at.myapp.MyBean

Solution: no solution available, it seems the HTTP PUT has gone wrong.
Stopping/Starting Tomcat helps :)

Diagnosis: Seems to occur when the HTTP PUT request is interrupted. I am 
doing the HTTP PUT across two firewalls, so this could happen sometimes. 
Maybe calculating a Hash across the whole WAR file and comparing it at the 
server side before deployment could help here.
Does someone know where this would have to be implemented in the source 
(main functions/entry points)?

2.) java.lang.ClassFormatError:
at/myapp/RequestClientCertificateApprovalPoster (Truncated class file)

Solution: This occurs sometimes, after this is happening only a complete 
shutdown of Tomcat helps. Redeployments (undeploy/deploy) won't help. I 
didn't try a reload, but I think it won't help either.
Stopping/Starting Tomcat helps :)

Diagnosis: same as 1.)

3.) BouncyCastle error
This error is a real jewel, as it seems to be related with static 
variables inside the JVM. It only goes away after stopping/starting 
Tomcat.

WebappClassLoader: Lifecycle error : CL stopped
java.security.KeyStoreException: PKCS12 not found
        at java.security.KeyStore.getInstance(KeyStore.java:230)
        at at.esv.utils.CertFactory.loadKeyStore(CertFactory.java:355)
        at at.esv.utils.CertFactory.createPKCS12File(CertFactory.java:265)

Solution:
Stopping/Starting Tomcat helps :)

Diagnosis: not yet available, probably static variables cause the pain 
here.

4.) Context.xml - docBase attribut is ignored
If you put a docBase into context.xml to specify a WAR file different from 
the one you are deploying (to perform a cool versioning operation), it 
won't be used by the manager app.
The manager app always uses the 
/work/Standalone/localhost/manager/<myapp>.war file.

5.) JSPC troubles:
If you have a JSP with the same name as another JSP and you compile it 
using JSPC, it will throw an error.
Only renaming the JSP helps (i.e. no duplicate JSP names in any 
subdirectory).

6.) JSPC troubles:
JSPC always uses UTF-8 to encode the resulting Java-Files. This is 
hardcoded into the manager app unfortunately.

So that's it.
Maybe some real solutions will come...

Johannes