I may have phrased the original issue badly. The installer has both Jetty and Tomcat as options to install on the main pack selection page. It was decided that because of the complexity of installing two web containers that we should not install both, but allow the operator to select one or the other.
In M5, the installer actually allowed both containers to be configured, but did not have a way to validate the ports selected. When configured correctly with no conflicting ports, both containers will start. There's some goofiness with offlineDeployer and runtimeDeployer since one of the containers will win the config.xml entries if more than one is selected -- looks like Tomcat wins. For 1.0, both containers will be listed on the first selection screen. However, it didn't make sense to default both to install when the plan was to only allow one. Allowing both requires the installer to validate the ports and ensure that the operator does not configure both containers to the same port. This problem exists for other port types as well, but is less likely to be a problem. IzPack does not support this inter-panel validation easily i.e. through normal XML based configuration. It requires that java code be built to extend the user input panels. On the other hand, limiting the operator to one web container is no panacea either. To effectively do this, I have configured the XML to set Jetty as the default to install (Tomcat can be selected) since it's confusing to do otherwise in this scenario (although the default could just as easily be Tomcat and it looks like the vote is going that way). This effectively starts down a good path for this scenario, but the operator can easily select both containers again. To stop this, I will extend a userinput panel to be invoked to check that both are selected and not allow the install to proceed past the first userinput screen -- the first screen after the major component selection. This again requires java code since IzPack does not have a parameter to apply to packs such as "exclusiveOf( packName )". This is interesting since it does have "depends( packname )" which allows us to require the Tomcat container when installing the Tomcat console, etc. This may be more than everyone wants to know, but to answer your question, I don't see any particular reason why the installer cannot allow installation of both. However, it's very late in the 1.0 cycle and the current design is that we'd allow one or the other, but not both. I have no particular preference myself. On Thursday 08 December 2005 18:30, Jeff Genender wrote: > This is obviously a hot topic and I hope that as a Geronimo PMC and user > community we are not forced to have to show preference of one over the > other. There is obviously some personal preferences on both sides and > we are a great open source project because we do not have to get behind > one *or* the other. We can get behind them both. > > May I ask why the installer/wizard cannot have a page called "Choose > Your Web Container" and have an option for Jetty and Tomcat, but neither > selected? Does there need to be a default? Can we just let the end > user choose? > > IMHO, I don't think we should provide a preference for one over the > other. I really like both. I think we should give the user the choice > without hinting a preference. > > Thoughts and comments? > > Jeff -- Regards, Erik
