Why separate the config from the war file

[Cantor, Scott]

On 4/8/15, 2:29 AM, "Alex Olson" <ako at byu.edu> wrote:


>
>Why does the IdP (v2) keep the configuration external from the built war 
>file? As opposed to building it into WEB-INF/ for example?

I'm not sure how to answer that question because the idea is so crazy to 
me that it would just never occur to me to consider the alternative. I 
spent countless hours on V3 eliminating every shred of dependence on 
anything inside the warfile that was left.

I guess if you're looking for an answer that isn't just visceral, it would 
be that Java intends for warfiles to be opaque and it isn't supposed to be 
a requirement that the files live on disk or be accessible to edit. That 
makes it inappropriate to expect them to be edited to change behavior. And 
it's equally inapproriate to expect a complex piece of production software 
to require a complete restart of everything to make even simple changes.

-- Scott