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

Answer 1

If you're aware of the marker files then you might have made a conscious choice to disable the automatic deployment mode for the deployment folder, which ships enabled by default. Autodeploy is great for everything but exploded files, and removes the need to manually manage the marker files. With autodeploy enabled, you can use the "touch" command on the application itself, which will update the timstamp and trigger the application for deployment (or redeployment). So you can still script if need be, but focus on the file rather than the marker files.

Just for reference, there are five ways to deploy files, of which three will be common to the typical administration setup. These are the graphical Management Console, the Management Command Line Interface (CLI) and the deployment folder you mention. The other two are via an IDE (such as JBoss Developer Studio or Eclipse with JBoss Tools), and even via Maven.

For people that may not be comfortable with the scripting as you say, then you can't go past the Manage Deployments section in the Console GUI. The Console deployment does not move/copy the application to the deployment folder, so using both the Console and the Deployment folder can make for some effort in file management.

For bash-savvy users, the CLI is great, and is often recommended by the AS7 team as a preferred method of deploying and managing applications. The user guide section on the CLI is located here: https://docs.jboss.org/author/display/AS7/Admin+Guide#AdminGuide-RunningtheCLI.

An example of all deployment methods can be found on this YouTube video by one of the developers: "5 ways to deploy your application to JBoss AS 7". Hope that helps.