Determine which GeoServer extensions are installed on a given instance of GeoServer

Question

I have a 2.7 GeoServer and I want to upgrade it. I installed a 2.18 version and in the Internet I found that I should do 2 things to upgrade:

1. Copy and paste the data_dir folder in the installation location of the new instance of GeoServer.
2. In addition, I read that I have to install all the extensions that were installed on the previous one.

How can I know which extensions were installed on the old version?

I can see this directory:

However, I have no idea which *.jar file is related to which extension. How can I have a list of them?

Here is the list of gs-* files in that directory:

gs-excel-2.7.1.jar
gs-gwc-2.7.1.jar
gs-h2-2.7.1.jar
gs-kml-2.7.1.jar
gs-main-2.7.1.jar
gs-ows-2.7.1.jar
gs-platform-2.7.1.jar
gs-rest-2.7.1.jar
gs-restconfig-2.7.1.jar
gs-sec-jdbc-2.7.1.jar
gs-sec-ldap-2.7.1.jar
gs-wcs-2.7.1.jar
gs-wcs1_0-2.7.1.jar
gs-wcs1_1-2.7.1.jar
gs-wcs2_0-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-core-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-demo-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-gwc-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-rest-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-sec-core-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-sec-jdbc-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-sec-ldap-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-wcs-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-wfs-2.7.1.jar
gs-web-wms-2.7.1.jar
gs-wfs-2.7.1.jar
gs-wms-2.7.1.jar

and this is the comparison with geoserver 2.18 which is recently installed and has no extensions installed on it:

The green ones in 2.7 are those that have a corresponding gs-* files in 2.18 and the red ones are those who does not have a corresponding. Thus, I guess H2 and Excel are the only ones that I have to install on 2.18. Is my reasoning correct?

Finally, I have downloaded H2 and Excel extensions for 2.18 and I have pasted the files in "C:geoserver-2.18.0\webapps\geoserver\WEB-INF\lib" directory. Then, I checked the modules tab in GeoServer 2.18.

It has exactly the same list that it had before installing H2 and Excel. I mean, after installing these two extensions they did not appear in the list of modules for 2.18 (I did the service restart).

Is it normal?

Answer 1

The only extension worth installing I see in that list of GeoServer jars is the Excel output format.

And yes, there is also gs-h2, but if you are actually using it to serve vector data, I'd urge you to get away from it as soon as possible, it's going to eventually be removed (in its incarnation, and might be replaced by H2GIS but that won't be compatible). If you are actually using it, try to migrate away and move to GeoPackage, if you need a single file database for vector data.