command line option -port missing

[Mark Brouwer <ma...@virgil.nl>]

Hi,

At the moment I'm making the transition to Tomcat 3.1 and I noticed from
the source code the -port option has been withdrawn. I used this option
to set the port number for the default context. Very handy if you have
one config file being used by many developers on the same server, this
way they don't have to edit their XML files just for their port number.
Also in a production/test environment where you don't want to have
people without much Tomcat knowledge changing your configuration files.

I tried to find on the mailing list when this was decided but it seems
the mail archive is down.

I know I can build it in again, but probably there was some reason for
removing it. Anybody a clue ?
-- 
Mark Brouwer
Virgil B.V.

Re: command line option -port missing

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

Mark Brouwer wrote:

> Hi,
>
> At the moment I'm making the transition to Tomcat 3.1 and I noticed from
> the source code the -port option has been withdrawn. I used this option
> to set the port number for the default context. Very handy if you have
> one config file being used by many developers on the same server, this
> way they don't have to edit their XML files just for their port number.
> Also in a production/test environment where you don't want to have
> people without much Tomcat knowledge changing your configuration files.
>

For personalization, port number is not necessarily the only thing you would
ever change, so when do you stop adding command line options.  A more
consistent approach, and an easy workaround to this, is to have a wrapper
script around the standard startup that does this:
* Copy the standard XML startup file to a temporary one.
* Using appropriate text processing tools (or a trivially simple program)
  replace the port number -- or anything else you need to change --
  with the customized value for that developer
* Start Tomcat using the temporary XML file

That way, you can still centralize your changes to the standard startup XML
file, but support customizations appropriate to your environment.

>
> I tried to find on the mailing list when this was decided but it seems
> the mail archive is down.
>
> I know I can build it in again, but probably there was some reason for
> removing it. Anybody a clue ?
> --
> Mark Brouwer
> Virgil B.V.
>

Craig McClanahan