Multiple instances of merged server applications on the same machine

Hosting several 4D Server applications on the same machine is not unusual, especially for production and pre-production environments. But if your machine hosts merged server applications built with different 4D versions, which is the case if you use your pre-production server with the latest 4D version, you may encounter problems due to the shared 4D structure folder.

Let’s see how to resolve this issue.

When launched, a merged server application called “myApp” will create a structure folder:

As long as your application keeps the same structure name (to maintain automatic updates or Windows service launch command) and evolves with different 4D versions, the structure folder is the same for each merged server application.

To avoid sharing this system folder between merged server applications built with different 4D versions (as shown in the above picture), you can now set the folder name during the build application process.

A new buildApp key is at your disposal to define your own structure folder:

<BuildApp>
  <CS>
    <ServerStructureFolderName>myApp_v18R5</ServerStructureFolderName>

As a result, if you set “myApp_v18R5” for your server built with 4D v18 R5 and “myApp_v18R6” for the one with 4D v18 R6 during the build application process, you’ll have separate structure folders in the system:

Safe deployments!