exec-8

Transitioning from an RPM workflow to a .tar (or .tar.gz) distribution simplifies build pipelines and decouples deployment from host-level package managers (rpm/yum).

The breakdown below details the modifications required for both your Gradle build and your Ansible deployment step.

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1. Gradle Project Changes

What to Remove:

• RPM Plugins: Remove any OS packaging plugins (e.g., id 'nebula.ospackage', com.netflix.nebula.ospackage).
• RPM Configuration Tasks: Delete all ospackage, buildRpm, or rpm tasks from build.gradle.
• Artifactory RPM Publications: Remove the RPM artifact publishing configuration inside your publishing block.

What to Add:

Apply Gradle’s native distribution plugin or use a standard Tar task, and update the Artifactory maven-publish or ivy publishing setup.

Example build.gradle snippet:

plugins {
    id 'java'
    id 'distribution'    // Generates .tar and .zip distribution archives
    id 'maven-publish'   // For pushing to Artifactory
}

// Option A: Configure standard distribution structure
distributions {
    main {
        distributionBaseName = 'my-app'
        contents {
            into('lib') {
                from configurations.runtimeClasspath
                from tasks.named('jar')
            }
            into('resources') {
                from 'src/main/resources'
            }
        }
    }
}

// Option B: Custom Tar Task (if you prefer explicit naming/compression)
tasks.register('buildAppTar', Tar) {
    archiveBaseName = 'my-app'
    archiveVersion  = project.version.toString()
    archiveExtension = 'tar.gz'
    compression      = Compression.GZIP

    into('lib') {
        from configurations.runtimeClasspath
        from tasks.named('jar')
    }
    into('resources') {
        from 'src/main/resources'
    }
}

// Update Artifactory publishing to push the TAR and Manifest
publishing {
    publications {
        mavenTar(MavenPublication) {
            // Attach the TAR archive generated by distribution or custom task
            artifact(tasks.named('distTar')) {
                extension 'tar.gz'
            }

            // Attach your manifest file artifact if generated separately
            artifact(file("${buildDir}/reports/manifest.json")) {
                classifier 'manifest'
                extension 'json'
            }
        }
    }
}

---

2. Ansible Playbook Changes

What to Remove:

• RPM Installation Tasks: Remove tasks using ansible.builtin.yum, ansible.builtin.dnf, or ansible.builtin.package to install the .rpm file.
• RPM Query / Cleanup Steps: Remove tasks checking rpm -qa or removing old package versions via package managers.

What to Add:

Use ansible.builtin.unarchive to fetch or unpack the .tar.gz directly into the target application path.

- name: Ensure application target directory exists
  ansible.builtin.file:
    path: /opt/my-app
    state: directory
    owner: appuser
    group: appuser
    mode: '0755'

- name: Retrieve Manifest from Artifactory
  ansible.builtin.get_url:
    url: "{{ artifactory_url }}/my-app-{{ app_version }}-manifest.json"
    dest: /opt/my-app/manifest.json
    url_username: "{{ artifactory_user }}"
    url_password: "{{ artifactory_password }}"
    mode: '0644'

- name: Download and unpack TAR directly onto host
  ansible.builtin.unarchive:
    src: "{{ artifactory_url }}/my-app-{{ app_version }}.tar.gz"
    dest: /opt/my-app/
    remote_src: yes  # Downloads directly from Artifactory URL on target host
    owner: appuser
    group: appuser
    mode: '0755'

---

Key Operational Differences

• Permissions & Ownership: RPM automatically handles system permissions during installation via the RPM spec. With .tar, explicitly pass owner, group, and mode attributes in the Ansible unarchive and file tasks.
• Symlinking / Versioning: Because .tar extraction overrides or adds to target directories rather than replacing a package database entry, consider extracting each deployment into a versioned folder (e.g., /opt/my-app/releases/1.2.3/) and swapping a symlink (/opt/my-app/current) for atomic rollbacks.