jboss 7 deployment issues with war - jboss

Question

We are using jboss 7 and the jboss-as-maven-plugin to autodeploy our war files. We have a web.xml with the contextRoot set to our application name. In the plugin we configured our fileName to be ${project.build.finalName}.${project.packaging}. It deploys fine but the issue is when our war file name changes when we change our release number.
So for example The war changes from myproject-v1.0.1.war to myproject-v1.0.2.war when we get ready to release our next version. Issue is when the maven jboss plugin runs and tries to deploy the war file. Note We have force set to true so it should un-deploy the old application and deploy the new one.
The issue is it seems to key off of the war file name and not the webContext when determine if the application is currently deployed. So the new version fails to deploy because the old one is still running. We have to go in and manually un-deploy the previous version then re-depoly. It seems that the force un-deploy of the old app is based on the war name and since the version number changes it doesn't think its deployed and leaves the old version running. Which cause it to fail because the webContext is already used.
We attempted to change the config in the plugin to be generic and that works (the runtime name and name show this name and no longer the war file name). But the only issue is that seems to affect something on jboss and though it says its deployed the webContext isn't valid and we can't get to our application. Which is stranges since the webContext is set in the web.xml but it seems that the config in the plugin some how breaks it.

Answer 1

There is a name configuration attribute you can define. That should override the deployment name. If it's not set it does use the name of the file.
<project>
...
<build>
...
<plugins>
...
<plugin>
<groupId>org.jboss.as.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>jboss-as-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>7.3.Final</version>
<configuration>
<name>your-app</name>
</configuration>
</plugin>
...
</plugins>
...
</build>
...
</project>

Answer 2

So after playing with this for a while, we couldn't find any reason as to why when we used the config it would deploy but the webContext was not set. But when we manually deployed the same WAR it set the webContext.
So in the end. What we ended up doing was changing the name of the war to a generic name. So rather then myapp_v_1_0_1.war we made it myapp.war. This is a pain because now we don't know what version is deployed by just looking in the console. We need to hit the application which display the version number. But by doing this it solved our issue with un-deploying the old app, but created a new issue where its not as easy to determine the version deployed via the console.

Answer 3

This article seems to answer your question.
https://community.jboss.org/wiki/HowdoIoverridethewebcontextroot
I tried it on my own project and it works! Basically, create a jboss-web.xml (now your project is specific, so much for write once deploy anywhere). Make the jboss-web.xml look like...
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jboss-web>
<context-root>/rmbMavenCounter</context-root>
</jboss-web>
Remove the configuration from the pom.xml for the jboss-as-plugin. My plugin now looks like
<build>
<plugins>
.....
<plugin>
<groupId>org.jboss.as.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>jboss-as-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>7.4.Final</version>
</plugin>
</plugins>
</build>
It will deploy with the snapshot name in the jboss admin console, but you can use the text string to access your application. For example, I used the following link to access the above application.
http://localhost:8080/rmbMavenCounter/
Here is the deployment from my jboss web server console...
08:12:42,413 INFO [org.jboss.as.server.deployment] (MSC service thread 1-16) JBAS015876: Starting deployment of "mavenCounter2-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.war"
08:12:42,606 INFO [javax.enterprise.resource.webcontainer.jsf.config] (MSC service thread 1-4) Initializing Mojarra 2.1.5 (SNAPSHOT 20111202) for context '/rmbMavenCounter'
08:12:42,663 INFO [javax.enterprise.resource.webcontainer.jsf.config] (MSC service thread 1-4) Monitoring jndi:/default-host/rmbMavenCounter/WEB-INF/faces-config.xml for modifications
08:12:42,665 INFO [org.jboss.web] (MSC service thread 1-4) JBAS018210: Registering web context: /rmbMavenCounter
08:12:42,678 INFO [org.jboss.as.server] (management-handler-threads - 30) JBAS018559: Deployed "mavenCounter2-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.war"

Answer 4

Same problem I faced: I wanted to upload the war using the version and build number for easy identification but at the same time to overwrite the previous service based on its name (with no version/build number).
This seems to be a limitation in the maven Jboss plugin: http://docs.jboss.org/jbossas/7/plugins/maven/latest/deploy-mojo.html. Currently only the 'name' parameter is supported which overwrites both the Name and the Runtime Name in the JBoss management console.
I would say long-term the plugin needs to support the 'runtimeName' as well in the list of parameters to the maven 'deploy' goal.
What you can do though, is to undeploy the service first using the 'undeploy' goal and use the 'matchPattern' parameter to find you previous service even if it included the version/build name.
Of course the disadvantage is that you have to undeploy; which is not well suited for a production environment.
For you example:
<plugin>
<groupId>org.jboss.as.plugins</groupId>
<artifactId>jboss-as-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<configuration>
<port>${JBOSS_PORT}</port>
<username>${JBOSS_USERNAME}</username>
<password>${JBOSS_PASSWORD}</password>
<force>true</force>
<ignoreMissingDeployment>true</ignoreMissingDeployment>
</configuration>
<executions>
<execution>
<id>undeploy-MyProject</id>
<phase>install</phase>
<goals>
<goal>undeploy</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<hostname>${HOSTNAME}</hostname>
<matchPattern>myproject.*\.war</matchPattern>
</configuration>
</execution>
<execution>
<id>deploy-MyProject</id>
<phase>install</phase>
<goals>
<goal>deploy</goal>
</goals>
<configuration>
<hostname>${HOSTNAME}</hostname>
<name>myproject-${project.version}.war</name>
<filename>target/myproject-${project.version}.war</filename>
</configuration>
</execution>
</executions>
</plugin>