[MEI-L] Installing MerMEId sustainably

[David Lewis]

This query is particularly aimed at people who maintain MerMEId installations.

The latest version of MerMEId strongly encourages installation using Docker, and the Docker installation in turn requires a .war file from an eXist database servlet.

On the other hand, eXist has now moved strongly towards operating as a standalone server: "We dropped support for building WAR files, as it was something we haven't really supported in a long time. Also running eXist-db inside a Servlet Container as a WAR has its own issues that were holding us back." (https://sourceforge.net/p/exist/mailman/message/36656900/ from May 2019)

What is the most sustainable way forward for installing a new MerMEId setup (with old data) on Docker? Do we need to use eXist pre v5? or is there a way to work with a more recent, standalone version  (say with Docker compose)?

Any ideas from the community or any experience with this would be really helpful.

Best wishes,

David