2.6. Hot Deployment

Hot deployment in JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 5 is controlled by the Profile implementations associated with the ProfileService. The HDScanner bean deployed via the deploy/hdscanner-jboss-beans.xml MC deployment, queries the profile service for changes in application directory contents and redeploys updated content, undeploys removed content, and adds new deployment content to the current server profile via the ProfileService.
If you want to disable hot deployment, temporarily or permanently, use either of the following methods. The second method is best used if you are disabling hot deployment only temporarily, since it's the easiest to undo.
  • Remove the hdscanner-jboss-beans.xml file from deployment;
  • Edit the hdscanner-jboss-beans.xml file, add the scanEnabled attribute (if it's not already present)and set its value to false.
Below is an extract of a hdscanner-jboss-beans.xml file in which hot deployment has been disabled. 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!--
   Hot deployment scanning
   
   $Id: hdscanner-jboss-beans.xml 98983 2010-01-04 13:35:41Z emuckenhuber $
-->
<deployment xmlns="urn:jboss:bean-deployer:2.0">

   <!-- Hotdeployment of applications -->
   <bean name="HDScanner" class="org.jboss.system.server.profileservice.hotdeploy.HDScanner">
       <property name="deployer"><inject bean="ProfileServiceDeployer"/></property>
       <property name="profileService"><inject bean="ProfileService"/></property>
       <property name="scanPeriod">5000</property>
       <property name="scanThreadName">HDScanner</property>
       <property name="scanEnabled">false</property>
   </bean>

   ...(snip)...

</deployment>

2.6.1. Adding a Custom Deploy Folder

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, by default, looks for deployments under the <JBOSS_HOME>/jboss-as/server/<PROFILE>/deploy folder. However you can configure the server to even include your custom folder for scanning deployments. This can be done by configuring the BootstrapProfileFactory MC bean in <JBOSS_HOME>/jboss-as/server/<PROFILE>/conf/bootstrap/profile.xml file. The applicationURIs property of the BootstrapProfileFactory accepts a list of URLs which will be scanned for applications. You can add your custom deploy folder to this list. For example, if you want /home/me/myapps to be scanned for deployments, then you can add the following: 
<bean name="BootstrapProfileFactory" class="org.jboss.system.server.profileservice.repository.
StaticProfileFactory">
   ...
   <property name="applicationURIs">
      <list elementClass="java.net.URI">
         <value>${jboss.server.home.url}deploy</value>
         <value>file:///home/me/myapps</value>
      </list>
   ...

Important

Modifying the <JBOSS_HOME>/jboss-as/server/<PROFILE>/conf/bootstrap/profile.xml requires a server restart, for the changes to take effect.
For performance reasons, adding a new deployment folder to the BootstrapProfileFactory also requires the same URL to be added to the VFSCache MC bean configuration in <JBOSS_HOME>/jboss-as/server/<PROFILE>/conf/bootstrap/vfs.xml. For example: 
<bean name="VFSCache">
   ...
   <property name="permanentRoots">
      <map keyClass="java.net.URL" valueClass="org.jboss.virtual.spi.ExceptionHandler">
         ...
         <entry>
            <key>file:///home/me/myapps</key>
            <value><inject bean="VfsNamesExceptionHandler"/></value>
         </entry>
      </map>
   </property>
   ...

Important

Not adding the custom deployment folder to VFSCache might result in growing disk space usage by the server, over a period of time.