Hi,

Well the approach i mentioned worked. the my.properties concept is pretty cool. None 
of the jetspeed resource files need to be modified and all i need to do is follow the 
steps in the list of instructions and it all works. SO in future even if there is a 
jetspeed upgrade the property files need not be edited all over again.

Thanks all for all your responses and inputs.

Meanwhile i think there should be a link somewhere within jetspeed explaining the 
options to deploy a custom portal application with jetspeed. This will definitely save 
a lot of sweat. Jetspeed is cool and i'm getting comfortable with it but a little more 
organised documentation for commonly occuring scenarios will make it go further. If 
this mailing list was not there then i would not have figured out a lot of things and 
remained in a loop.

Regards,
Archana




>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/20/04 09:19PM >>>
Sounds like an interesting approach (but a little bit over my head) - I am very 
interested to hear how it all turns out.  Good luck!
RB

    

Twenty Years | One Mission | Accelerating Business Processes 


Richard Berger 
Action Technologies, Inc. 
VP, Product Management 
510.748.1017 (Office) 
510.769.0596 (Fax) 
www.actiontech.com 

NOTE: The opinions expressed herein are those of the writer and not necessarily those 
of Action Technologies, Inc. or its employees or its affiliates. 
-----Original Message----- 
    From: Archana Turaga [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
    Sent: Tue 1/20/2004 9:29 AM 
    To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
    Cc: 
    Subject: RE: build question---please help
    
    

    Thanks Richard. I appreciate the input (no you have not sidetracked me..:-). 
Meanwhile i found something in the jetspeed's build.xml that may help my issue.
    
    Well this is considering that none of the jetspeed source needs any change and 
will work as it is released in the CVS. Any extra classes that are written belong to a 
custom package structure belonging to the company and these most of the times (till 
now in my experience) trurn out to be extensions of existing jetspeed classes For e.g. 
Portlet classes extend JSPPortletAction.
    
    Considering above is the case the following can be done (based on the information 
in the jetspeed's build.xml)
    1) Build jetspeed with the option war-template.
    2) Explode this war to the app server webapps directory.
    3) Copy the jetspeed jar and its dependent jars into the web-inf\lib directory.
    4) Copy the custom portals template files to the template directories under the 
webapps/
    5) Copy the custom portals jars to the web-inf\lib directory.
    6) This step is something i'm currently experimenting on. I'm going to try to 
create my.properties (following the jetspeed property override-howto) and see if i can 
also embed this. If this happens and my portal works then viola i think i have 
achieved most of my goal.
    
    If all the above steps are followed then i could do the following:
    1) I can check-in the combined structure into our source control
    2) Everybody else in our group can then check-in the jsps, java files to this 
structure
    3) Write make files(not ant tasks but .gmk files) to build the custom portals jar 
files and custom portal's war file.
    
    Although jetspeed source will still be maintained as a separate entity and ant 
will be used to build the jar file needed for the custom portal. In future if there 
are any bug fixes then this source will be modified and the jar will be rebuilt and 
the custom portal's application war will have to be rebuilt to include this new jar.
    
    I hope i'm making some sense. If anybody sees a problem with this approach or 
tried the war-template approach please please let me know. Any input is appreciated 
because that will allow me to make a sound decision on the maintainence aspect of the 
portal.
    
    Thanks and i appreciate all the help,
    Regards,
    Archana
    
    
    
    
    >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 01/20/04 11:16AM >>>
    Not sure if this is quite the answer you were seeking, but I am doing
    something similar - e.g. incorporating an existing portal application
    into the Jetspeed framework.  Initially, I started by installing the
    jetspeed .war file and then hacking various configuration files.  Then,
    in order to take the next step of incorporating my Java code, I realized
    I would need to have the source to Jetspeed and to incorporate my source
    into that structure (e.g. writing new portlets in the package
    org.apache.jetspeed.modules.actions.portlets).  So, I downloaded the
    source and created new portlets. 
    
    To do the build, I used the Jetspeed build.xml file, but I didn't need
    to make any changes in it.  I put some additional .jar files in the
    appropriate lib directory and the ant tasks copy them to web-inf.  Then
    to deploy my Jetspeed portal (with my portlets), I created a .war file
    and then exploded it into the deployment directory (I used slightly
    different locations for Jboss and WebLogic).  Then, in general, when
    making additional changes I use the ant target "hotdeploy" (and then
    usually have to restart the app server).
    
    With this background, I will try to answer your specific questions:
    Q1) Do i have to then look at jetspeed's(the jetspeed source) build file
    to come up with my build.xml?
    <RB>I believe that you can use the jetspeed's build.xml, but I believe
    that you do not have to modify that build.xml. </RB>
    2) Instead of exploding the jetspeed jar to \web-inf\classes can i just
    include this like a library jar in the web-inf\lib?
    <RB>Don't know.  My approach was to incorporate my stuff into the
    Jetspeed framework, rather than just trying to use jetspeed as a jar.
    It would be cool if #2 was possible, but something tells me that it
    won't work (disclaimer: I am real newbie at this)</RB>
    3) If step 2 is valid then can i only take all the files that are
    missing in the jar file from the jetspeed directory and deploy them into
    the file structure of my custom portal? for e.g. the .properties files
    are not present in the jar file. Can i just copy this property files
    from jetspeed directory into the my own portal's space ,merge the
    properties and then build my own war file?
    <RB>NA, as I am assuming that #2 is false</RB>
    4) What are the recommended methods of source maintainence of custom
    portals? Does the jetspeed source also need to be maintained or the
    binaries and property files are enough?
    <RB>Great question - as you can tell, I was under the impression that
    the jetspeed source needs to maintained, extended, modified, etc. - at
    least if you want to have any type of custom portlets.  As you have
    probably seen, you can create DBMS portlets and RSS portlets without
    having to write any code (and there are probably others that are
    configurable). </RB>
    
    Hope that was useful and that my lack of true understanding didn't get
    in the way :) :).
    
    RB
    
    
    
    Twenty Years | One Mission | Accelerating Business Processes
    
    
    Richard Berger
    Action Technologies, Inc.
    VP, Product Management
    510.748.1017 (Office)
    510.769.0596 (Fax)
    www.actiontech.com
    
    NOTE: The opinions expressed herein are those of the writer and not necessarily 
those of Action Technologies, Inc. or its employees or its affiliates.
    -----Original Message-----
    From: Archana Turaga [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
    Sent: Monday, January 19, 2004 4:20 PM
    To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
    Subject: build question---please help
    
    Hi,
    I have my own portal application with it's own library files and jsp
    files. To understand jetspeed i just built the tutorial and hacked that
    structure to include my portal specific information. Now i want to
    create a build.xml that will work with ant to create my own portal war.
    I cannot follow the tutorial build.xml because it goes in three steps
    there
    i) Deploy(this will simply replicate the jetspeed.war) ii)Start tomcat
    This will explode the war into a directory structure.
    iii) Then hot deploy so that it copies all the tutorial specific
    information to exploded structure under tomcat.
    Also the tutorial does not have it's own library files. I have my own
    libraries that i want to use.
    
    Questions:
    1) Do i have to then look at jetspeed's(the jetspeed source) build file
    to come up with my build.xml?
    2) Instead of exploding the jetspeed jar to \web-inf\classes can i just
    include this like a library jar in the web-inf\lib?
    3) If step 2 is valid then can i only take all the files that are
    missing in the jar file from the jetspeed directory and deploy them into
    the file structure of my custom portal? for e.g. the .properties files
    are not present in the jar file. Can i just copy this property files
    from jetspeed directory into the my own portal's space ,merge the
    properties and then build my own war file?
    4) What are the recommended methods of source maintainence of custom
    portals? Does the jetspeed source also need to be maintained or the
    binaries and property files are enough?
    
    Please help me. I have been trying to figure out the best way to
    formalise the steps of source maintainence. Therefore all the developers
    of the portlets can use this structure to check-in and check-out source.
    
    Thanks in advance for your time and patience, Archana
    
    
    
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