Supplying an external configuration to the Java Buildpack

I wanted to highlight a very important commit recently made to the Java Buildpack i.e.You can now configure the Java Buildpack with a custom server.xml via a repository.

Extension point for supplying an external Tomcat configuration

This allows a CF Platform Operator to provide a vetted server.xml that contains custom Tomcat configuration to the Java Buildpack without forking the buildpack. This feature is OFF by default. In order to enable it set the following env variable in the manifest:

Example in a manifest.yml
env: JBP_CONFIG_TOMCAT: "{ tomcat: { external_configuration_enabled: true }, external_configuration: { repository_root: \"http://repository...\" } }"

The artifacts that the repository provides must be in TAR format and must follow the Tomcat archive structure:

tomcat
|__conf
   |__context.xml
   |__server.xml
   |__web.xml
   |...

You can expect this feature to show up in the next release of the JavaBuildpack and its downstream clones like TomEE.