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System classpath generation

On Windows systems, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) uses the system classpath to locate libraries and other resources such as configuration files.

The system classpath is used by the following SDL Tridion Sites services:

  • Transport Service
  • Content Deployer (legacy)
  • Cache Channel Service (a deprecated feature)

Content Delivery dynamically builds this classpath because the length of the required environment variable for the classpath exceeds the 1024 byte limit that Windows imposes on any environment variable. To build the classpath, Content Delivery first needs to determine the SDL Tridion Sites Home directory.

Setting TRIDION_HOME
When an SDL Tridion Sites service is started, the SDL Tridion Sites Home directory is determined as follows:
  • If there is a registry entry for TRIDION_HOME for this specific service or for all Content Delivery Services, the value of the entry is the SDL Tridion Sites Home.
  • If no such registry entry exists, SDL Tridion Sites Home is set to the value of the environment variable TRIDION_HOME, which by default is set to C:\Program Files\Tridion\.
  • If no registry entry or environment variable has been set for TRIDION_HOME, the parent directory of the folder in which cd_*.exe is located is identified as SDL Tridion Home, where * is transport, deployer, or cacheservice.
Generating the classpath
When the SDL Tridion Sites Home directory has been determined, Content Delivery builds the classpath as follows:
  • the system adds %TRIDION_HOME%\Config to the classpath—the config directory contains the XML configuration files for Content Delivery modules.
  • the system iterates through the *.jar and *.zip files in the %TRIDION_HOME%\lib directory and adds these to the classpath.
  • the system then adds the generated classpath to the system classpath.