10.8. Deployment Descriptor Overrides

A new feature in EAP 6.1.x allows you to override deployment descriptors, JARs, classes, JSP pages, and other files at runtime. A deployment overlay represents a ruleset of files that must be overridden in the archive. It also provides links to the new files that must be used instead of the overridden ones. If the file being overridden is not present in the deployment archive, it will be added back to the deployment.

Procedure 10.17. Override the deployment descriptor using the Management CLI

The following steps assume that you already have a deployed application called app.war and you wish to override it's WEB-INF/web.xml file with another web.xml file located in /home/user/web.xml.
  1. Add a deployment overlay and add content to it. You can achieve this in the following two ways:
    • Using DMR tree

      1. /deployment-overlay=myoverlay:add
      2. /deployment-overlay=myoverlay/content=WEB-INF\/web.xml:add(content={url=file:///home/user/web.xml})
        You can also add more content rules using the second statement.
    • Using convenience methods

      deployment-overlay add --name=myoverlay --content=WEB-INF/web.xml=/home/user/web.xml
  2. Link the overlay to a deployment archive. You can achieve this in the following two ways:
    • Using DMR tree

      /deployment-overlay=myoverlay/deployment=app.war:add
    • Using convenience methods

      deployment-overlay link --name=myoverlay --deployments=app.war
      You may specify multiple archive names separated by commas.
    Note that the deployment archive name need not exist on the server. You are specifying the name, but not yet linking it to an actual deployment.
  3. Redeploy the application

    /deployment=app.war:redeploy