This is issue a) in Konstantin's comments in TOMCAT-NEXT.txt My expectation is that the need for refactoring in some form or another is clear. Currently Tomcat has the following features: - aliases - resource JARs - VirtualDirContext / VirtualLoader
and in Servlet 3.1 there will be overlays. [1] Each of these features (except overlays which isn't implemented yet) does almost the same thing each in slightly different ways. The code is already quite messy and adding overlay support is going to be really difficult without some refactoring. The various bugs we have seen in the Virtual[Context|Loader] implementation hasn't been great and I am concerned that an overlay implementation built on the existing code will be fragile. A refactored, coherent resources implementation will make implementing overlays a lot simpler. The new resources implementation I just committed already supports overlays - it just needs plumbing in to whatever API the Servlet EG defines. I view this issue not as what the refactoring should look like but that there is a need for a refactoring of some form before any further features are added for resource handling. Mark [1] Overlays are WARs that are used to complete / modify a base WAR and are intended for multi-tenancy type applications. Think company hosting accounting services with one big WAR to provide the accountancy application and one small WAR per customer to customise the UI each customer gets. Not necessarily a perfect example but you get the idea. Personally, I'd solve the issue at build time with one WAR per customer but I think that this idea isn;t going to go away. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@tomcat.apache.org
