Plugins are not correctly deployed in webapp mode

• Key: FOR-735
• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Resolution: Fixed
• Priority: Critical
• Assignee: Ross Gardler
• Reporter: Gunther Sablon
• Component/s: Core operations, Launch servlet WAR, Plugins (general issues)
• Affects Version/s: 0.7
• Fix Version/s: 0.8

Description

(At this point I didn't try this scenario step by step any more; basically it is what we did to setup the site, except that we copied our project data from forrest 0.6 before trying the pdf links)

- run forrest webapp to create an empty webapp
- configure Tomcat to run the webapp (we did it by creating a context descriptor and put it onder Tomcat's config directory)
- the pdf links give an error "Resource Not Found"

Comments

[Ross Gardler]

I have not investigated this but it sounds like plugins are not being correctly packaged in the WAR.

[Ross Gardler]

Changed subject to reflect the wider implications of this issue.

There is various discussion in the thread:
 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=113388482500001
 "Using plugins with forrest as webapp"

[Ross Gardler]

The "webapp" target does not include the plugin files, but the "war" target does:

WORKAROUND:

Build the war file with "forrest war" and deploy that instead. Your servlet engine should unpack it when it is first used, but you could always unpack manually if necessary.

[Gunther Sablon]

I ran forrest war, and then manually moved the build/plugins directory into the root directory of each of our forrest webapps..
Restarted Tomcat and... it works!

Thanks!

[David Crossley]

The thread mentioned on 07 Dec above was restarted here:
"Using plugins with forrest as webapp"
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=113448261400001

[Thorsten Scherler]

Can it be because the plugins got downloaded even we have them on the hard drive?

[Ross Gardler]

The problem is simply that the plugins are not located in the war file in a place Forrest expects to find them. They are not downloaded when running a war, ony when building a war. And even then they are only downloaded if they are not already present on the local machine (either in build or in the plugins src directory.

[Johannes Schaefer]

To get it running (forrest-0.7-377981, tomcat 5.5.15)

1. Adapt web.xml, see http://tinyurl.com/cn5ep (Mail archive)
   Now Forrest runs and produces some output but *not a single*
   plugin works.

2. Copy Forrest-0.7/build/plugins into the webapp dir and change
   the plugins entry in
      webapps\my-project\WEB-INF\xconf\forrest-core.xconf
   to
     <plugins>@context.home@/plugins</plugins>
   as described in http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FOR-403

Note: you must run Forrest first to get the plugins you need into the forrest/build directory.

[Johannes Schaefer]

seems to work in 0.8, too.

it's better to create a war-file using 'forrest war',
this will include the plugins (see Ross' comment above)

step 2 needs to be then
  <plugins>@context.home@/build/plugins</plugins>

[David Crossley]

There is a patch provided in the thread listed above, i.e.
 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=113388482500001
 "Using plugins with forrest as webapp"
but the thread broke and started again here:
 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=113448261400001
 "SV: Using plugins with forrest as webapp"