Metacat

Currently the spatial data cache is stored within the servlet context. Geoserver's configuration hardcodes the shapefile path so storing it within the context allows you to specify relative paths in the geoserver config files. However, if you reinstall metacat, the cache will be replaced and will need to be regenerated on every "ant install". This is obviously a problem for developers who might rebuild frequently.

The proposed solution involves configuring the shp paths in build.properties and updating the geoserver config files at build-time. Doing this with ant tokens would be straighforward but we'd ideally want another solution (XML-DOM based since all geoserver configuration files are xml).

The paths would also need to be in metacat.properties so they could be accessed by the spatial harvester class.