tomcat8 @ 8.0.24 looking for review/feedback/help

[raupachz (Björn Raupach)]

MacPorts is missing a current Apache Tomcat 8 port. Unlike tomcat5 and tomcat6 this does not build tomcat. It downloads and extracts a binary from one of the Apache mirror sites.

I am totally new to creating ports files. This is my first attempt and it would be nice if someone is willing to help/work with me on this port. I do have experiences with running Apache Tomcat on *nix servers.

This port is plain and simple it just downloads, extracts and copies files to ${prefix}/share/java. You can start and stop tomcat via the provided scripts in /bin. This is probably not how a server should act.

• Should I create a custom system account and group e.g. tomcat:tomcat?
• Start and stop via launched?
• How should I deal with updates? Lets say I change my server.xml and the port updates? Is it possible to keep files around?

[neverpanic (Clemens Lang)]

• openmaintainer is meaningless without a real maintainer associated with it. So either add yourself in the domain.tld:localpart obfuscated format, or just use nomaintainer.
• We prefer sha256 and rmd160 checksums nowadays. If you delete the checksums line and run port -v checksum, the correct line will be printed.
• You're mixing tabs and spaces in the depends_lib line
• MacPorts has a delete command that wraps file delete that you could use instead of file delete in the pre-destroot block. I think it doesn't make a difference in this case, but it's still shorter.
• If you're overriding the destroot phase anyway, there's little point in splitting out parts of it into pre- or post-destroot.
• don't set destroot.keepdirs in a phase; do it at the top level of the Portfile
• If you want, you can create a custom account for tomcat using the add_users directive. You could also use OS X' builtin _www user.
• Please provide a launchd control interface so port load tomcat8 will start and port unload tomcat8 will stop the server. Search other Portfiles for startupitem to see how it's done -- if you need help, please feel free to ask here or on -dev.
• If your port installs configuration files that should stay around after a user uninstalls the port and should not be overwritten by updates, move the configuration file by appending ".sample" and add a note (notes your-text-here) to tell the user that he needs to configure tomcat by creating the file before starting it.

[neverpanic (Clemens Lang)]

Cc Me!

[raupachz (Björn Raupach)]

I am still working on the custom account for Tomcat and moving files so that they don't get replaced upon an upgrade.

Here are the ​security considerations from Apache Tomcat Team. I used to run it like this in production unless the distro provided a custom Tomcat installation. So it probably makes sense to set this port up like the developers recommend.

Starting and stopping works now via the startupitem. It is not perfect yet. I am still missing a PID file but that should be easy once I figure out how to deal with /files in a port.

[raupachz (Björn Raupach)]

Apache Tomcat does not distribute setenv.sh . I created a custom one and made sure it is not overridden on updates. We need this file to tell Tomcat to create a PID file.

However there is the conf directory. Basically all the files in that directory can and will be edited during Tomcat installation. Should I copy them and make .default or .sample files?

Still figuring out how to deal with custom accounts and setting permissions.

[raupachz (Björn Raupach)]

files/setenv.sh

[raupachz (Björn Raupach)]

Oh wow. 16 months ago.

I updated the portfile to Apache Tomcat 8.5.8. The ports loads und loads and I set the permission to tomcat:tomcat.

Anyone else looking for Tomcat port?

[kencu (Ken)]

Hi. I downloaded the files and installed this just now. I don't know a great deal about tomcat, though. It installed without any errors on 10.6, and then I did sudo port load to launch it. It seemed to be continually restarting though:

17-05-24 10:17:16 PM	org.macports.tomcat8[57243]	Tomcat started.
17-05-24 10:17:16 PM	com.apple.launchd[1]	(org.macports.tomcat8) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
17-05-24 10:17:26 PM	org.macports.tomcat8[57254]	Tomcat started.
17-05-24 10:17:26 PM	com.apple.launchd[1]	(org.macports.tomcat8) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
17-05-24 10:17:36 PM	org.macports.tomcat8[57265]	Tomcat started.
17-05-24 10:17:36 PM	com.apple.launchd[1]	(org.macports.tomcat8) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
17-05-24 10:17:46 PM	org.macports.tomcat8[57276]	Tomcat started.
17-05-24 10:17:47 PM	com.apple.launchd[1]	(org.macports.tomcat8) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds}}}

running the start script manually says it starts:
{{{
$ sudo /opt/local/share/java/tomcat8/bin/catalina.sh start
Using CATALINA_BASE:   /opt/local/share/java/tomcat8
Using CATALINA_HOME:   /opt/local/share/java/tomcat8
Using CATALINA_TMPDIR: /opt/local/share/java/tomcat8/temp
Using JRE_HOME:        /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home
Using CLASSPATH:       /opt/local/share/java/tomcat8/bin/bootstrap.jar:/opt/local/share/java/tomcat8/bin/tomcat-juli.jar
Using CATALINA_PID:    /opt/local/var/run/tomcat8.pid
Existing PID file found during start.
Removing/clearing stale PID file.
Tomcat started.
}}}

but I can't connect to it with http://localhost:8080/, and the activity monitor shows no process named tomcat running.

Sorry if it's just my ignorance about how to see it work. Otherwise everything went smoothly for the installation.

[kencu (Ken)]

I did notice that tomcat6 seems to have a load of dependencies when I tried to install that:

$ sudo port -v install tomcat6
--->  Computing dependencies for tomcat6............................
The following dependencies will be installed: 
 apache-ant
 commons-beanutils
 commons-codec
 commons-collections
 commons-daemon
 commons-dbcp
 commons-digester
 commons-el
 commons-fileupload
 commons-httpclient
 commons-io
 commons-launcher
 commons-logging
 commons-modeler
 commons-pool
 hamcrest-core
 jakarta-bcel
 jakarta-log4j
 jakarta-regexp
 jakarta-taglibs-standard-11
 junit
 mx4j
 saxpath
 servlet23-api
 servlet24-api
 xalanj
 xercesj

could some of those be needed for tomcat8 as well?

[raupachz (Björn Raupach)]

Hi Ken,

Tomcat 8 needs Java 7. Your JRE_HOME points to Java 6.

Tomcat is pretty self contained. You don't need any additional dependencies other than the ones provided. No clue why the ports of tomcat6 is different.