[Zope-dev] Re: Product installation (implicit vs. explicit)

[Rocky Burt]

Chris McDonough wrote:
> What do Java people expect from jar files (I ask as a Java dope)?  Do 
> they have a more limited scope (no dependencies, for example?)

Coming from a heavy java/j2ee background I can say that people in
java-land expect to place jar's on the java classpath (equivalent of
pythonpath) and they "just work" with regard to showing up on the classpath.

Taking this one step further, a Zope2 product egg would be closer to a
J2EE ear (Enterprise ARchive) file rather than a Java jar file.  An ear
file is basically a jar file with extra metadata stating that it follows
the appropriate conventions for j2ee deployment (basically instructions
on which parts of the ear file are for ejb management, more for web file
management, etc).

Now the best question is, do ear files get automatically configured and
installed by a j2ee server?  Answer: It depends.

This is comppletely up to the j2ee server implementation.  Orion and
JBoss for example (full j2ee implementations) have a special directory
where you can simply drop ear files and they get automatically get
picked up by the server and deployed as applications/components.

But, having said that, I know for a fact that the "preferred" manner to
configure an ear file with Orion is to do it explicitly in Orion's xml
configuration files.

Hopefully that sheds some light.

Regarding dependencies, no, jar/war/ear files (java's zip file types) do
not have dependency configuration although they do have the ability to
use something else if it exists (you can specify a Class-Path argument
in the manifest file).

- Rocky


-- 
Rocky Burt
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