Okay, well, as long as we've opened this can of worms...
Jeremy, what is your intention WRT editing configurations without
the server running?
You know I'm not going to give a short answer to a question like that ;-) I'm going to move it to another thread.
For example, let's say you do a default install, but do not start the server. Now you start a different product that binds to port 8080.
At this point, I think you'll be unable to start Geronimo due to the port conflict (assuming that J2EE services are enabled). You're also unable to change the Jetty port without re-installing, and then only if you use the installer rather than a ZIP distribution. Needless to say, and web-based configuration or management system is also inaccessible.
This certainly seems like a good case for XML based configuration state, where you could trivially edit a config file to change the Jetty port and *then* start the server. But it's not the only option. Do you have a vision for some kind of tool that would let you change the server configuration while it is not running? Perhaps something that will let you deserialize and edit arbitrary configurations?
I'm also assuming that the end user does not have access to (or substantial knowledge of) the plans used to construct the server in the first place.
I think that's not a good assumption. We should not expect them to be hacking XML but reconstructing configurations should be a routine matter not a /big thing/. But more in that other thread...
-- Jeremy
