Hot deploy WAR files in OSGi

These days I was looking for a simple way of deploying WAR files into OSGi. Something similar to a JEE servlet container does: I put the WAR file into a directory and it gets automatically deployed. Well, I could not find such a thing, which was easy enough to use (and do not tell me to take Spring dm Server or IBM WAS 7 Alpha something ).

So, what next? Only one option, build my own tools for such a thing. After all, how hard it could be?

I took Pax Runner to start it up easy, and provision via profiles Pax Web for WAR support (inspiration of OSGi Alliance RFC-66) and Felix File Install for hot deployment of files in a directory. Of course that was not enough as in its raw form File Install will not deploy a WAR file since it is not an OSGi bundle. It had to be first transformed. I already have a tool to transform WAR files to OSGi bundles in the form of Pax Url WAR handler (another inspiration of OSGi Alliance RFC-66), what was missing was “something” to ask me to transform the WAR to its OSGi form. Lucky me! File Install is extensible in latest versions by transformers like the one I needed. Took me 15 minutes to put in place a new Pax Web module (Pax Web Deployer), implement the transformer, build it and start it up using Pax Runner. Then I copied Sonatype Nexus WAR into the watched directory and there it was: Nexus running under OSGi. Deleted the WAR, Nexus got uninstalled. Sweet!

Want to try it out?

install Pax Runner (note that using Pax Runner is just for convenience. What you need to get this working are just the bundles included in Pax Runner profiles and the new Pax Web Deployer)

start the osgi framework with the following command line:

pax-run war config felix.fileinstall url mvn:org.ops4j.pax.web/pax-web-deployer/0.7.3-SNAPSHOT --repositories=+http://repository.ops4j.org/mvn-snapshots/@snapshots

ensure that all the bundles are started
copy your WAR into “runner/load” directory under the directory from where you started .
watch the console to see your WAR getting deployed
have fun with it

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Published:: December 18, 2009 / 10:34 pm

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My name is Alin Dreghiciu and I am a software developer with a passion for open source.

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Mike Francis 12.19.09 / 8am

Hi Alin

You could try Nimble. It does all this and a lot more to make working with OSGi easier – see http://bit.ly/7RPaKs. Its free to download and use with a 30 day renewable license from http://bit.ly/4w5Oku. Mike (Paremus).

adreghiciu 12.19.09 / 1pm

Sure Mike. I could have tried that. But my requirements were different.
Anyhow, the whole point of the blog is to show how easy you could make hot deployment happen.

Mike Francis 12.19.09 / 11am

Alin. One of my colleagues just pointed out that I missed the fact that this was raw WAR’s. Nimble works with ‘bundlized’ WARs at this stage. Apologies, Mike.

adreghiciu 12.19.09 / 1pm

Using Pax URL WAR and it should be easy to “bundlize” it.

Wolfgang 12.19.09 / 12pm

I used Pax Runner as well to run a Grails application (which is a normal .war-file). See http://blog.jetztgrad.net/2009/11/grails-on-osgi-2-first-steps/. Pax Runner is great, but I had to skip on Pax Web and use SpringDM as Web Extender ebacuse of bug PAXWEB-148.

Something similar to what you have done here is already possible with Apache Karaf, which is basically the ServiceMix kernel, which runs on Felix or Equinox and integrates FileInstall, a Web and SSH console, etc. This project is similar in its scope to SpringDM server but (I think) more lightweight.

Thanks for all your work on Pax*

Wolfgang

adreghiciu 12.19.09 / 1pm

I will have a look at PAXWEB-148. I was pretty busy last months with my job. Is kind of sad that nobody else steps in and contributes to Pax Web, OPS4J style: open participation.

Related to Karaf I do not recall any support for web nor WAR files. Of course, Karaf is an OSGi engine so you could just deploy Pax Web / Pax Web Extender / Pax Web Deployer and there you go you have the same thing working.
Pax Web even has support for Karaf “features” to easy install all of this things.

You are welcome.

1. Wolfgang 12.19.09 / 2pm
  
  I had a look at the source code of Pax Web for a way to fix this bug. I was not sure, whether to change the registration of filters, as I didn’t have time to figure out, whether Jetty does something with the filters as well, so I left it at that, sorry.
  
  In the end I simply wanted to get my OSGi application to run, so I tried SpringDM and this worked. As Grails is heavily based on Spring, this will be the route to go anyway.
  
  On the other hand, Pax Runner (even more so with Pax Web) is a great way to get OSGi apps/bundles running very quickly, so it would be nice, if this bug would get fixed. I might try it again over the christmas holidays, but I can’t promise anything…
  
  Wolfgang
2. adreghiciu 12.20.09 / 12pm
  
  I solved PAXWEB-148. Give it a try when you can.
3. Wolfgang 1.4.10 / 9am
  
  Hi Alin,
  
  my application works great with Pax Web 0.8-SNAPSHOT. Thanks for solving PAXWEB-148!
  
  Regards,
  
  Wolfgang

Narayana 1.5.10 / 1pm

Hi,

I am new to pax-runner and i am successfully installed pax-runner but when i tried to execute the second command which you mentioned below, it is not working and throwing the following error

pax-run war config felix.fileinstall url mvn:org.ops4j.pax.web/pax-web-deployer/0.7.3-SNAPSHOT –repositories=+http://repository.ops4j.org/mvn-snapshots/@snapshots

may i know what could be the problem?

Thanks,
Narayana

adreghiciu 1.6.10 / 1pm

You may wanna look at http://is.gd/5O2bc if you are running on windows. Otherwise post also the error you get

1. Ciprian Popa 1.11.10 / 3pm
  
  Hi Alin,
  
  Thank you for your great work done with the PAX-Family
  
  The problem mentioned in PAX Runner FAQ (“009. I’m using Pax Runner on DOS/Windows, I have the right command but I’m getting strange errors”) is easily fixed by using Windows command line arguments expansion with “%*” in the launcher scripts, so just replace “%1 %2 %3 %4 %5 %6 %7 %8 %9″ with “%*”.
  An additional benefit of this fix will be that now you’ll support more then 9 arguments.
  
  So here it is how the pax-run.bat files should look (use it as a template for the other Pax tools):
  ———-
  
  @echo off
  SETLOCAL
  set _SCRIPTS_=%~dp0
  java %JAVA_OPTS% -cp “.;%_SCRIPTS_%;%_SCRIPTS_%\pax-runner-1.3.0.jar” org.ops4j.pax.runner.Run %*
  
  or with an additional variable declaration (not in-place expansion as above)
  
  @echo off
  SETLOCAL
  set _SCRIPTS_=%~dp0
  set PAX_ARGS=%*
  java %JAVA_OPTS% -cp “.;%_SCRIPTS_%;%_SCRIPTS_%\pax-runner-1.3.0.jar” org.ops4j.pax.runner.Run %PAX_ARGS%
  
  ———-
  
  In the meantime, until you’ll release a new version of scripts with this/similar fix, everybody interested can just simply change their current PAX Windows launchers with accordingly:
  
  PS (Romanian): Sunt un “butonator” de Java din Sibiu care am descoperit de oaresce vreme PAX-ul, cu care ocazie te si felicit … Chiar imi spuneam, iata inca un roman care isi face bine treaba !
2. adreghiciu 2.5.10 / 9am
  
  Quite late with my reply, but thanx. I will try out your fix.

Federico Vela 2.4.10 / 3pm

Does PAX-WEB run on servlet 3.0?

adreghiciu 2.5.10 / 9am

Right now, it does not as it is importing [2.3, 2.6). If 3.0 is compatible at api level it should also work with 3.0, but of course that will not implement the new features. Will just allow one to use the 3.0 version of API.

If you need this, please create a jira issue for Pax Web and I will implement it.

1. Federico Vela 2.5.10 / 1pm
  
  Thanks for your reply,
  
  I created the issue.
  
  http://issues.ops4j.org/browse/PAXWEB-194
  
  Peace.

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Hot deploy WAR files in OSGi

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