Chapter 6: The Geronimo Deployer

Overview

One of the most frequently used tools by administrators, deployers, and developers is the Geronimo command-line deployment tool. This tool is the primary means of getting binary modules installed on a Geronimo server for server-side execution.

The Geronimo command-line deployment tool can work in one of two modes:

• Online deployment when a target Geronimo server is running

• Offline deployment when a target Geronimo server is not running

In addition to module deployment, the tool can also be used to:

• Start a module running

• Stop a running module

• View the modules that are installed on the server instance

• Uninstall a module from a server instance

• Find and install plug-ins for Geronimo

This chapter provides a detailed overview of the operation and usage of this essential Geronimo tool.

You will discover that the command-line deployer is actually a JSR-88 deployment client tool. This enables it to be used with servers other than Geronimo by replacing the default server driver.

A very useful component related to the run-time deployer, called the Maven deployment plug-in, will also be covered in this chapter. The Maven deployment plug-in allows you to write scripts that work with the run-time deployer mechanism in Geronimo, providing a means to automate common deployment-related tasks.