Proposal: Support Hop Web deployment on Apache Tomcat for Windows

[michaaels]

Motivation

Hop Web is currently distributed primarily through the official Docker
image. However, Hop Web is built as a WAR application and the official
Docker image runs it on Apache Tomcat.

Some Windows environments cannot use Docker. For these environments,
deploying Hop Web directly on Apache Tomcat would provide a useful
alternative.

Proposal

Document and validate the deployment of Hop Web on Apache Tomcat for
Windows as an additional supported installation method.

The documentation should cover:

• Prerequisite Java and Apache Tomcat versions.
• Building or obtaining the Hop Web WAR.
• Deploying the WAR on Apache Tomcat.
• Starting and stopping Hop Web.
• Verifying that the application starts correctly.
• Updating Hop Web to a newer version.
• Basic troubleshooting.

Scope

This proposal is limited to:

• Microsoft Windows.
• Apache Tomcat.
• Hop Web deployed as a WAR.
• Operation without Docker.

Current validation

Hop Web has been successfully built as a WAR and deployed directly on
Apache Tomcat for Windows using Java 21 and Apache Tomcat 10.1.

Basic functionality has been validated, including:

• Starting the application.
• Opening the Hop Web interface.
• Creating and opening pipelines and workflows.
• Saving files.
• Loading Hop projects.

[bamaer]

Have you seen the Hop Web Development Guide?
It won't be exactly what you're asking for and not Windows specific, but this should get you a long way.

[stormxue]

This is an excellent idea. It is extremely helpful for Windows or Linux production environments without a Docker setup.