RFC: New port for using Tomcat with jakarta-commons-daemon (jscv)

[Herve Quiroz]

Hi Martin,

[ I'm just recovering for some big mail issue so I hope I didn't miss any
follow-up to your message ]

Thanks for your contribution. I have yet to test your patch, but from
what I've seen so far (the shar arhcive), I think it would be better to
have two separate ports: jakarta-commons-daemon (the general library)
upon which would depend jakarta-tomcat-daemon (or whichever the name
would be).

Anyway, your current port provides a good base to work on. There are
several other approaches to the "Tomcat launcher and run-time argument
passing" that have been suggested or implemented so far. I am not a true
user of Tomcat myself, so I can't really comment on their respective
ease of use, and viability. So I would be glad if all people concerned
by such issue could report on the various approaches so far.

IMHO, the point is that we need a separate port to implement this Tomcat
launcher so that we don't replicate the work in each Tomcat port.
Moreover, having such a separation (tomcat / tomcat-launcher) would
allow for several kinds of launcher to be part of the ports tree, in
case we would not agree on a particular one.

I will test your patch and comment on it ASAP.

Herve


FYI, PRs related to this issue:

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/38018
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/38020
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/59571
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/74344
http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/query-pr.cgi?pr=ports/75143

Please report if any is missing from the list...

On Sun, Jun 19, 2005 at 02:45:25PM +0200, Martin Jakob wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I hope this is the correct list to post this message, because it has tomcat
> as
> its main topic, but well, its also about creating/improving a port, so...
> 
> Since i had to start tomcat with different jdks and/or startup-parameters,
> i sat down and tried to use the jscv from 
> http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/daemon/jsvc.html
> I found the port from Herve Quiroz, extended it a bit and added a rcNG 
> tomcat.sh controll-script.
> 
> The port works quite well on my test system, so maybe its usefull for other
> people as well. I tested it with jdk1.4.2, jdk1.5.0, jakarta-tomcat-5.0 and
> the new jakarta-tomcat-5.5.9 port. Just changing the variables in rc.conf
> and
> restart the daemon switches the used jdk (and other parameters).
> 
> I am sure there are more glitches in the port, but here are some points
> where i need input and ideas from other people:
> 
> - the name
> "jakarta-tomcat-daemon" is not an official name, i used it for the tests.
> Any better ideas?
> 
> - the patch "patch-jsvc-unix.c"
> its more or less a hack to show the complete path of the process in ps. I
> added
> this, so that i could use the builtin rcNG functions for
> stop/restart/status.
> Maybe someone with better knowledge of C can comment on this hack?
> 
> - dependencies
> at the moment there are no tomcat dependencies regarded in the Makefile.
> 
> - shutdown time
> it really takes some time after /usr/local/etc/rc.d/tomcat.sh (stop|restart)
> is
> executed to stop/restart the process. Again, any ideas what could cause
> this?
> 
> Credits:
> Based on the ports/scripts from Herve Quiroz and clement (apache2)
> 
> So, now have fun with this port :)
> 
> --Martin