Aaron Mulder wrote: <snip/>
Also, wearing my end user hat, I'm not as concerned about this
issue as stated -- Every time I upgrade, for example, JBoss, I install it
into a new directory, reapply any configuration changes, and redeploy my
apps. It might be different if the product offered an "upgrade in place"
install option. Still, I upgrade pretty rarely. So an easy upgrade path is probably for me, at best, a "nice to have".
I'm more concerned about the inability to conveniently edit serialized configuration information, which I hope to take up on the other thread that Jeremy was going to start. That is a lot more of a common issue for me -- more of a "must have".
Aaron
As a user, I pretty much agree with Aaron (both points), with the following additional comment on the first one:
Major version upgrades are relatively rare events, but applying patches / service packs / whatever they may be called is more common and sometimes needs to be done quickly with minimal disruption. Having to redeploy all apps on a server to which a patch is applied is not ideal. Having strange things happen after patches are applied is even less fun ;-)
So I guess it all depends on what exactly we mean by "upgrade"...
I put my thoughts on the wiki: http://wiki.apache.org/geronimo/Architecture/ConfigurationManagement
My expectation is that if the original server and a "patched" server can both provide the environment the application expects then it will run identically on both systems.
I would expect the change process to be something like: * get patched version of server bundle from somewhere * install the patched bundle in a test server * check the existing application still runs and the problem is fixed * build a new application bundle depending on the patched server version
you then have a couple of choices for rollout, either * push patched server bundle to production * pro-actively push to runtime servers, replacing the buggy server
or * push patched server bundle to production * push updated application bundle to production * roll new application bundle to runtime servers as appropriate * each runtime server will get the patched server bundle from config control so that it can support the new application version
and other variations of either approach.
-- Jeremy
