New Apache Tomcat Branch 5.5 Released

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..."

Comments

Tomcat is amazing

[BoomerSooner]

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 along with apache.

Re:Tomcat is amazing

[weeksie]

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

[arthurs_sidekick]

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.

Change is for JSP compilation ...

[jlrobins_uncc]

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 ...

[JavaRob]

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....

Re:Change is for JSP compilation ...

[stefanlasiewski]

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...

Re:Change is for JSP compilation ...

[jrumney]

It was difficult to bundle Tomcat previously because you Sun does not allow you to redistribute the SDK

It has always been a one line change in server.xml to configure Tomcat to use jikes instead of tools.jar for compiling JSPs. I wouldn't call that difficult.

Re:eclipse is an sdk?

[Hard_Code]

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.