The quest for the Java Portal - Running Liferay

Now, I have a profiled environment. But, when I tried to run JBoss (without profiling), I got an error in counter-ejb module. Its classpath is not correctand, so, I added this line to my build.[user|computer].properties:

classpath.manifest=[original line in build.properties] lib/doubleclick-filter.jar

I reported this bug on Liferay JIRA [#LEP-2406]. After another 16 minutes of compilation, I forgot to initialize the database. I had two options: use a diferent connection pool or initialize it before deploying Liferay. I prefer the second, so, the easiest way was to create a MBean that depends on LiferayPool. Hypersonic is smart enough to allow multiple SQL commands in one Statement. I will upload the code later, but it is a matter of create a MBean that reads the script provided by Liferay and runs it on the poll.

This leads to an strange error about Spring transactions with EJB, Hibernate, JBoss and all. I don't remember the details, but the solution is to change the debug attribute of CachedConnectionManager. This is something I can't do in my shared JBoss server, so, I used an dirty trick:

1. Start JBoss with no Liferay, but with the original data source (liferay-db.xml configured);
2. JBoss translates your -ds file into and -service file and logs it with debug level;
3. Grab the translated file in log, create the -service, delete the -ds and indent the file - this will help you understand its structure;
4. Now, the funny part: copy CacheConnectionManager definition from jboss-jca.xml, paste into liferay-service.xml (inside the "CachedConnectionManager" optional attribute), and rename the MBean to an unique name - I put a ",name=xxx" suffix.

This will create a custom CCM to Liferay, without violating the original instance. That's what I love in Java (specially in JBoss): you can create a Lego-like software that is just a matter of do the bindings.

Liferay runs fine, but I found two bugs: a ClassNotFoundException about ical4j, and the contents of Guest community are blank. The first, I solve by adding lib/ical4j.jar to manifest classpath (as above). The second I don't care, since I will clean everything when I deploy the real application.