This article is a legacy article. It applies to previous versions of the Liferay product. While the article is no longer maintained, the information may still be applicable.
There are multiple application servers that allow users to deploy plugins via an administration console of some sort. This is helpful for many applications, especially in a cluster, but with Liferay plugins an extra step must be taken to ensure proper deployment.
Resolution
JBoss (or any application server that uses an administration console)
During a hot-deploy process Liferay adds extra content to the portlet's war file. If the portlet skips the hot-deploy feature (like the case of the administration console) then that additional information will be missing.
The administration console may still be used with Liferay, and may be accomplished with the following steps:
1) Enable Liferay's hot-deploy feature
- Note the deployments directory (where the expanded war files will be stored)
Below are the relevant portal-ext.properties:
auto.deploy.enabled=trueauto.deploy.unpack.war=falseauto.deploy.jboss.dest.dir=[For JBoss, the destination directory for the repackaged .war file]2) Hot-deploy the plugin (to Liferay's deploy folder).
3) Retrieve the modified war file in the destination directory specified above.
4) Upload the modified war file as a regular web application and continue with the deploy process as usual.
Additional Information
When JBoss is in "Domain Mode", it does not use a"deployment scanner", (a directory where the server monitors for applications to deploy) like other common application servers.
In this case, a user may deploy the plugin to a bundle (via the deploy folder), compress the output into a .war folder, and then deploy this repackaged .war file.