[SoC] UbuntuGIS Report 5

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

Cameron and Jérôme,

because GeoServer dependencies are typically deployed in its webapps 
WEB-INF/lib directory, it is in my view going to be difficult to package 
GeoTools in a way that does not tie all servlets on the system to the 
same version.

I recommend that GeoTools be packaged for deployment in a shared 
location that is *not* on tomcat's classpath. This will support 
development of non-servlet applications. I further recommend that all 
GeoServer dependencies (including GeoTools and JTS) be included in the 
GeoServer package, which has has no dependency on the GeoTools .deb; 
this is the likely outcome of a straightforward .war to .deb conversion. 
Yes, this will result in duplication, but it will protect deployments 
against inadvertent version mismatches. I propose that each of GeoServer 
and GeoTools contain a copy of its respective JTS.

There are benefits to reducing duplication, and I am open to alternative 
views. I simply recommend the simplistic pattern I *know* will work; if 
anyone can convince me that it is safe to install GeoTools in (for 
example) the tomcat shared libraries directory when another servlet 
contains a different version of GeoTools, I will be pleased to accept 
this approach.

Kind regards,
Ben.

On 23/06/14 06:26, Cameron Shorter wrote:
> GeoServer depends upon GeoTools which in turn depends upon JTS.
> I'd be interested to hear Ben's recommendations re packaging.

-- 
Ben Caradoc-Davies <Ben.Caradoc-Davies at csiro.au>
Software Engineer
CSIRO Earth Science and Resource Engineering
Australian Resources Research Centre