Archives and folders

There are specific characteristics about how Deploy handles archive artifacts (such as ZIP files) and folders. In Deploy’s Unified Deployment Model (UDM) type hierarchy, there are two base types for deployable artifacts:

Every deployable artifact type in Deploy is a subtype of one of these two base types. The udm.BaseDeployableArchiveArtifact artifact is a subtype of udm.BaseDeployableFileArtifact and is used as the base type for deployable archives such as jee.Ear.

Deploy manages the majority of archives as regular files. In archives, the default value for the scanPlaceholdersproperty is false. This prevents scanning of placeholders when you import an archive into the Deploy repository.

Archives are not automatically decompressed when you deploy them. This is to prevent the application server handling the archive decompression. Deploy stores folder artifacts in the repository as ZIP files for efficiency. This setting is not visible to a normal user.

When you import a deployment package (DAR file), you can specify the content of a folder artifact as a plain folder or as an archive (ZIP file) inside the DAR.

Continuous integration tools such as Maven, Jenkins, Hudson, Bamboo, and Team Foundation Server should support the ability to refer to an archive in the build output as the source for a folder artifact.