Portability & other issues of the minute.

[Miles Daffin <mi...@cwcom.net>]

Hello to all those treading the Tomcat user trail,

1: Fully encapsulated webapps...

> >
> > Because we're trying to write nice well-behaved webapps, we don't want
to
> > have to change a global setting, only a local-to-webapp setting.
> >

Is it possible to set the access control stuff on a webapp local scope? I am
talking about the stuff currently defined in 'tomcat-users.xml'.

It would be better in my opinion.

2: Load on start up - funny numbers
e.g.
  <load-on-startup>
            -2147483646
  </load-on-startup>

Why -2147483646 here (taken from the servlet entry in main web.xml for
org.apache.tomcat.servlets.DefaultServlet)
and 5 in the example web.xml in the doc\appdev directory?

3: How can I use ANT to compile my JSPs so I can debugger them without
having to go through TOMCAT??
This would be a really useful trick. I have been trying in vain to get
Jasper to do this.


Miles

Re: Portability & other issues of the minute.

["Craig R. McClanahan" <Cr...@eng.sun.com>]

See intermixed.

Miles Daffin wrote:

> Hello to all those treading the Tomcat user trail,
>
> 1: Fully encapsulated webapps...
>
> > >
> > > Because we're trying to write nice well-behaved webapps, we don't want
> to
> > > have to change a global setting, only a local-to-webapp setting.
> > >
>
> Is it possible to set the access control stuff on a webapp local scope? I am
> talking about the stuff currently defined in 'tomcat-users.xml'.
>

In Tomcat 3.2, no.  In Tomcat 4.0, yes.

>
> It would be better in my opinion.
>
> 2: Load on start up - funny numbers
> e.g.
>   <load-on-startup>
>             -2147483646
>   </load-on-startup>
>
> Why -2147483646 here (taken from the servlet entry in main web.xml for
> org.apache.tomcat.servlets.DefaultServlet)
> and 5 in the example web.xml in the doc\appdev directory?
>

It's the most negative integer that can be represented in a 32-bit int.
Essentially, this value (or any negative value) says "I want this servlet loaded
at startup time, but I do not care what order it is loaded in."

>
> 3: How can I use ANT to compile my JSPs so I can debugger them without
> having to go through TOMCAT??
> This would be a really useful trick. I have been trying in vain to get
> Jasper to do this.
>

One approach would be to use the "jspc" command-line tool (which you can invoke
from Ant using the <exec> task).  This will precompile all of the JSP pages in
your app, and give you the source code for them (plus a chunk of stuff to stick
in web.xml for the generated servlets).

Of course, you still need Tomcat to run the JSP pages while debugging them,
because JSP pages are turned into servlets (not standalone applications).  Some
IDEs (like Forte) do this for you behind the scenes.

>
> Miles

Craig