Re: shared working directory for a jsp/web project - help?

[Eric Siegerman]

On Mon, Jun 03, 2002 at 01:19:07PM -0700, Paul Tomsic wrote:
> Hi, I'm implementing CVS for a web project that is
> JSP/Java/Apache/Tomcat
> 
> If all developers make a local copy of all the files,
> then we'd have to set up quite a few virtual servers
> (one for each developer) no?

Yup.

> Does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations as
> to how we should do this?

Bite the bullet and create all those servers.  Works for us...

Actually, we go one step further.  Instead of virtual servers, we
give each developer their own *real* Apache/JRun pair.  I presume
this would work equally well for Tomcat, but we haven't tried it.
Dunno about JSP though; I've never used that.

Advantages:
  - if a user is testing a buggy version of some class, it
    doesn't break other users' testing (assuming they fix the
    bug before they commit, of course)

  - a user can stop and restart their server at will, without
    affecting others' work

  - everybody gets their own logs; they don't have to pore
    through everyone else's debug traces

Sure it's a lot of Apaches, but they're all idle 100-epsilon
percent of the time, so the only resource they consume that
really matters is swap space.

Disadvantage:
  - Does *not* work with absolute URLs.

  - Likewise, you have to figure out a way to virtualize access
    to other resources, such as Java properties files.
  
But then, you already have live and development servers running,
so you've presumably already dealt with these issues.

--

|  | /\
|-_|/  >   Eric Siegerman, Toronto, Ont.        address@hidden
|  |  /
Anyone who swims with the current will reach the big music steamship;
whoever swims against the current will perhaps reach the source.
        - Paul Schneider-Esleben