[Jalview-discuss] -props argument in JNLP

[Jim Procter]

Hi David.

On 15/03/2011 10:35, David Martin wrote:
> I have configured a JNLP by altering the following section (codebase is localhost/Jalview/webstart):
>
>         <application-desc main-class="jalview.bin.Jalview">
>                 <argument>-props</argument>
>                 <argument>http://localhost/Jalview/webstart/local.properties</argument>
>         </application-desc>
>
> The properties are not read. Jalview prompts for google tracking and then loads the example file from jalview.org despite the properties indicating not to load an example file and to take it from localhost. 
What is happening here is that Jalview is failing to retrieve the
properties file, and defaulting to default configuration, because all
-props argument actually does in version 2.6.x is override the path
jalview uses to retrieve its properties file. Even worse, that version
assumes the argument is a filename - not a URL, so it simply fails to
read any properties file at all, and when you close Jalview, or modify
its config, it'll also fail to write the file out to the path you've
given it. I fixed the web retrieval part a month ago after Balasz
commented on this in another post (see
http://issues.jalview.org/browse/JAL-761).
> Obviously I can't open the Java console until the application has started so can't see what is going on.
You can. If you enable the system java console as described in
www.jalview.org/faq.html (rather than just opening Jalview's console,
which starts up later on), then you would see everything that goes on.
Alternately, run javaws from the command line.

> Any clues? Are null values allowed in the property fields?
This is totally dependent on the field. Empty values are correctly
treated as false if they are boolean, but will otherwise be parsed
according to the datatype. In your case, what you want to do is only
specify the properties that you actually want to control in the
web-based properties file, and leave the rest as default. Ideally,
Jalview should then gracefully merge these specific properties into the
user's own config.

I have a feeling the properties file is not actually the correct
approach for achieving the functionality you want, anyhow. You want to
launch jalview with specific server URLs preconfigured, and the best way
to do that would be to create some new arguments to allow JABA server
URLs to be specified on the command line directly (in the same way that
DAS sequence and annotation servers can be).

Jim.