[Jython-dev] PyServlet

[<bc...@wo...>]

[In a private conversation David Syer raised several good points about
PyServlet. Forgive me for taking the private discussion to the list]

>You could add getServletContext().getRealPath("/") to sys.path in PyServlet
>in the constructor.

A good idea. That should take care of most issues with the application
part of sys.path.

In addition to this, I suggest that we add a fake __file__ attribute to
the globals before loading the .py file and before calling the service()
method. That way the main .py will know where it is located during load.

>Does [the fact sys.prefix is null in PyServlet] explain why the cachedir
>is created in a weird place (the web-apps directory, not <path-to-jython.jar>)?

Exactly.

I've already added the init-params as jython options, so we in web.xml
can do:

 *         <init-param>
 *             <param-name>python.home</param-name>
 *             <param-value>/usr/home/jython-2.0</param-value>
 *         </init-param>

to set python.home and all the other registry properties. Unfortunately
this is mostly useless if we want to set a path to something relative to
the webapps folder. And most of the times, that is exactly what we want.

So I suggest that unless a specific python.home is set in init-param or
System.getProperties(), PyServlet will set python.home to
<context>/WEB-INF/lib. This means the jython.jar, the registry file and
the ./Lib directory can be distributed in WEB-INF/lib.

regards,
finn