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Java Software Programming Apache

New Apache Tomcat Branch 5.5 Released 29

Posted by michael from the now-ever-so-slightly-faster dept.
darthcamaro writes "A good week for Apache Tomcat users - an incremental update to the latest stable version - 5.028 - and a new branch - Apache Tomcat 5.5. According to a story running on internetnews.com, the most notable features include the move to Eclipse from SUN's SDK, which according to one Tomcat user quoted in the story means that Tomcat will be faster than ever before. It's kinda funny that the way to make Java run faster is to take Sun out of the equation..."
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New Apache Tomcat Branch 5.5 Released More

New Apache Tomcat Branch 5.5 Released

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  • Tomcat is amazing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @09:44AM (#10149015) Homepage Journal
    I've been using it since around 99 or 2000 (bad memory) while trying to learn how to use jsp to migrate our platform from a purely servlet/corba based architecture (very complicated). At the time I was amazed at the simplicity of using such a robust tool. Since that time I have become an even larger fan.

    FYI Tomcat is the webserver in OS X Server [apple.com] along with apache.

    • Re:Tomcat is amazing (Score:2, Insightful)

      by weeksie ( 634500 )
      I know this will come off as a bit trollish but calling a J2EE app server a great tool sounds a bit like Stockholm Syndrome to me. I imagine it was great compared to stock servlets and corba *shiver*.
      I like Tomcat and have developed several apps with it, however simple and robust are not terms I would grace it with.

  • Pedantic (Score:5, Informative)

    by arthurs_sidekick ( 41708 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @09:48AM (#10149059) Homepage
    The two main changes are (1) making sure it works with the upcoming JDK 5.0 (formerly 1.5) release and (2) shipping the Eclipse compiler *for compiling JSPs*. Neither of these moves are strikingly fundamental, although the second one is kind of interesting.
    • It seems a little risky upgrade, one have to go with the possible bugs in a new Tomcat version as well as a rather heavy upgrade on Java versión with its own bugs.
    • The article is wrong. Tomcat 5.5 does not depend on JDK5.0. It uses classes which are distributed by JDK 5.0 by default. But Tomcat 5.5 works fine with JDK 1.4 and the compat libraries.
  • "the most notable features include the move to Eclipse from SUN's SDK"

    Can someone clarify this???

    • Re:eclipse is an sdk? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hard_Code ( 49548 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @09:56AM (#10149144)
      RTFA

      They are moving to eclipe's java development tools which include a compiler which is faster than the standard Sun compiler (at the moment I presume). The compiler is used for compiling JSPs.
      • "faster than the standard Sun compiler"

        Now is that faster as in .java->.class time or faster in the sense that bytecode (aka "binaries") are faster (eg. more effeceint better optimized code path*)?

        *I have no idea how much the Java standard limits this or not.

        • Faster as in .java -> .class time. In fact, the article does prett much say this; it's faster at compiling JSPs (which is a two step process: JSP -> .java -> .class), but once all your JSPs are compiled, and if they do not change, the use of Eclipse's tools is not an advantage.

          Again, compiling is faster, not runtime.

      • The question is, is Eclipse's compiler faster or slower than Jikes, which everyone has been using with Tomcat for years?

  • Change is for JSP compilation ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by jlrobins_uncc ( 136569 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @09:51AM (#10149094)
    Seems they now default to using the java compiler shipped with Eclipse instead of the com.sun.* compiler which 'javac' uses. So, no tools.jar dependency -- can run on straight sun JRE, not SDK.

    This only effects JSP (re)compilation.

    This could have been made more clear by the submitter. But that wouldn't do, would it?

    • Re:Change is for JSP compilation ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by JavaRob ( 28971 ) on Friday September 03, 2004 @12:55PM (#10151032) Homepage Journal
      Exactly -- and I'd also point out that no large site that I know of would be affected by this performance-wise, though faster compilation of JSPs will be nice for development. How often do you make a JSP change that will be seen first by the end user?

      JSPs can be easily precompiled, or just hit by the developer before linking them on the site, to force compilation. Even if compilation is faster than it was, that doesn't mean it's as fast as when the user hits a page that's already been compiled.

      Either way, Tomcat is a great app -- funny that it started as just a simple "reference" implementation of the servlet/JSP APIs....
      • The thing is that the Eclipse compiler could potentially improve the performace even with pre-compiled pages. If the compiler performace better optimizations on the java byte-code generated. Also if your site uses static includes, that frequently change, this would be a big improvement too.
        • If the compiler performace better optimizations on the java byte-code generated.

          That's a bigger "if" than you might think. I'm not ruling it out until someone checks in with some stats... but most Java optimizations happen at runtime (since that's where it's turned into actual machine code).

          Obviously most Java compilers do dead code removal, constant folding, inlining, etc., but from what I understand there aren't any huge differences, and javac -O is pretty good.

          Anyone with more info?
    • can run on straight sun JRE, not SDK.

      This is good news. It was difficult to bundle Tomcat previously because you Sun does not allow you to redistribute the SDK, but you could redistribute pieces of the JDK like javac, or tools.jar (I think they improved this situation in 1.4.2).

      You would need to copy tools.jar or javac from the SDK to the JRE, repackage the JRE, modify the Tomcat startup script to use tools.jar and not depend on bin/jdb (which was not Redistributable).

      Erg...
    • Sorry, you still need tools.jar.

  • amoung other things (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the stock javac shipped with the JDK has had some issues. In Tomcat 4, they switched to use ANT to create a separate process, so that it wouldn't cause a memory leak. the earlier version use javac within the same JVM, so it would cause a memory leak. JDT is a solid tool and works better, so it makes a lot of sense.
    • Why would they? Sun Java compiler (javac) is the standard compiler but there are others. Sun doesn't make money on javac because is freely downloadable. You can still use javac with Tomcat 5.5 if you want. There are yet others Java compilers around. Is just that Sun doesn't allow others to redistribute JSDK. Tomcat guys decided to include just another compiler to save the hasle, which incidentally may have some enhancements over plain javac.

  • It's important to note that:

    "This is the first release of the new Tomcat 5.5 branch, and as such it is not yet stable. We expect significant additional changes, including possible changes to packaging, dependencies, and Tomcat internal APIs, before the first 5.5 stable release is made."

    From http://jakarta.apache.org/site/news/news-2004-2ndH alf.html#20040831.1 [apache.org]

  • It's kinda funny that the way to make Java run faster is to take Sun out of the equation...

    The author should have read the release notes from tomcat. Its not taking Sun out of the equation - its exactly the reverse: To quote:

    "Tomcat 5.5 is designed to run on J2SE 5.0 and later"

    There is nothing anti-Sun about this at all. What they have done is to include the Eclipse JDT compiler, to speed the compilation of JSP pages, but tomcat can also use the Javac in any JDK you have installed.

    The bundling of th

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