[Red5] about version 0.6 / my current experiences

[Joachim Bauch]

Hi Ruben,

First of all thanks for your input!

Ruben Waitz / Amtex wrote:
> I've played around with red5 and gained some experience with java package
> development for Red5 ("Application.class").
> 
> First of all Red5 is a great product but I'm very curious about the ease of
> general usage with it in production environments:
> - for the server: installing/configuring/updating/etc;
> - for applications: deploying/configuring/updating;

Well, Red5 currently is mainly targeted for developers, so there might be
a few rough edges in productive use.

> I noticed that it's quite a job to deploy a new application with mysql
> support in a (remote) Red5 production environment:
> - add the application class (helloWorld.class) to red5.jar
> - configure all settings (xml/properties files)
> - add mysql-connector-java.*.jar to the server to get MySQL access
> - add mysql jar to "wrapper.conf" (windows) or pass classpath option with
> mysql jar to the java executable
> - restart the server.....

You can actually deploy your application but adding a new folder to the
"webapps" directory with the following sub-folders:

WEB-INF        -> configuration files
   |-- lib     -> *.jar files
   |-- classes -> compiled classes

Of course you will have to adjust the configuration files depending
on the database you are using, but the .class and .jar files should
be used automatically during startup of your application.
There should be no need to change any Red5 files (besides network
settings).  Note to self: this needs to be documented better!

Restarting is required as Red5 doesn't load new applications when
already running.

What would you like to improve here?  Or better: how would you like
to deploy your application?

> Will there be a management interface (e.g. webinterface) available in the
> future to configure Red5? (A kind of 'webmin' solution to make life a little
> easier?)

Some sort of management interface is planned, but we currently don't know
how this will look like.  Ideas welcome ;)

> I think version 0.6 (ref: roadmap) might deal with some of my notices, but
> maybe you can do something with my findings.

Yep, we will add a lot of administrator supporting tools and documentation
in later versions.  For easier application development, scripting support
will also help a lot.

> (P.s. Joachim, I agree with you that shared objects are supported from the
> trunk v0.5. I didn't know that...)

SharedObjects are supported in 0.4.* as well, however the support for
serverside listeners is new and will only be available starting in 0.5.

Joachim