JBoss AS7 *.dodeploy files

Question

We package our application as a .war file, we advertise support for JBoss AS5 and instruct our clients to copy the .war into their JBoss 'deploy' directory, and start up their application server in order to deploy the .war.

We are introducing support for JBoss AS7, so our deployment instructions for AS7 will have to change to something like

-copy the application.war to $JBOSS_HOME/standalone/deployments
-touch $JBOSS_HOME/standalone/deployments/application.war.dodeploy
-start JBoss AS7

This deployent method seems awkward to me, and possibly fragile, as failure to successfully create the *.dodeploy file would cause the deploy to fail. Also JBoss startup problems may cause the deploy to fail, causing the *.dodeploy file to be renamed *.failed - so it would have to be renamed back to *.dodeploy before attempting to redeploy. We are thinking the process seems a little awkward for some of our clients, who may not be familiar with JBoss AS7.

Is there any way to automate this deployment process so that it is smoother for deployers who may not be comfortable with how things work with JBoss AS7? How are other people handling this type of situation? thanks for any suggestions.

Answer 1

There is a web interface that's fairly easy to use. You can access it after JBoss AS7 has been started by going to http://localhost:8080. There is a link on that page that takes you to the administration console.

You could also write scripts for deployments using the CLI interface. There is some information here https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/AS7/Management+Clients about how to use it.

Lastly you can always write your own Java client to deploy applications. I wrote a blog post a while back on how to write a custom deployment CLI interface.