I have a customer who wants the ability to modify the .properties files packaged in the web applications WAR file so that they have the control to modify environments at settings. They will be hosting this site on their own servers so I can't say I blame them but I am a little unsure what the best course is.
I would think that any adminstrator of a Java EE application server should know how to drill into the WAR package with a zip tool and find and modify the properties files themselves. I am unsure if this is common knowledge or not.
I have typically always packaged my build artifacts with the property files appropriate for a given environment, but this is kind of an oddball case where WE build the WAR and hand it off to the customer. I might try to keep the property files external from the WAR but then it gets messy because of classloader issues (JBoss classloader, Tomcat classloader, etc...)
I am thinking that as a convenience we maintain properties files for THEIR environments and change and build these on their requests. My manager likes this idea because it keeps us in control but the customer doesn't like this.
What would you do?