Re: Tomcat 3.2-beta-6 or 4.0m3?

["Craig R. McClanahan" <Cr...@eng.sun.com>]

To follow up on a few of the items from my perspective as a Tomcat
developer:

Kitching Simon wrote:

> Hi Tomcat developers,
>
> I'd love to see some info on the release plans
> for these products too. I presume that those of
> you with "committer" status have some
> general long-term plans....
>
> I understand that software development schedules
> (and esp. open-source projects) are difficult to
> estimate, but a rough guess would still be better
> than no information!
>
> I assume that 3.2 release will come well before
> 4.0 release, so that's one reason to stick with 3.2
> instead of moving to 4.0 right now.
> Would I be right in guessing 3.2 release is expected
> sometime round december, and 4.0 release around
> march/april next year???
>

I cannot speak directly for the release plans for 3.2 final -- that is up
to Sam Ruby, who is the release manager for this version.  I would assume,
however, that it is imminent.

My personal goals for Tomcat 4.0 include:

- Feature-complete implementation of the servlet 2.3
  and JSP 1.2 "Proposed Final Draft" specifications
  that were recently published at java.sun.com (this
  will be accomplished with a Milestone 4 release
  that will be generated tomorrow night if all goes well).

- Attention shifting towards bug fixing and performance
  tuning, with the goal of a production-quality implementation
  by Christmas time or so.  The more people that help
  debug and tune it, the shorter this time frame can be.

- Addition of web connectors (so you can run 4.0 behind
  a web server like you can with 3.2), JNDI environment
  support, and other new features as contributed by
  volunteers working on 4.0.

So, which version should you use?

- If you're readying a production deployment, and do not
  need servlet 2.3/JSP 1.2 features, definitely stick with
  the most recent release of 3.2.  It will be more stable
  and performant at the moment (although early signs are
  that 4.0 will mature very nicely in these directions :-).

- If you've got some time to help debug and tune, and/or
  you need the new 2.3/1.2 features (like filters, wrapped
  RequestDIspatcher arguments, XML syntax for JSP
  pages, custom tag validators, .....) then grab the latest
  milestone of Tomcat 4.0 and help us make it better.

FYI:  Tomcat 4.0 will be the web component of the J2EE 1.3 reference
implementation, when it is released.

>
> However, I am really puzzled by the existence of
> the 3.3 stream; surely 3.4 will come out *after*
> 4.0, in which case what's the point of it???
>

The "3.3" code stream was some enhancement work (based on the 3.2 code
base) that started about the time that the first 3.2 beta was released, and
continues to receive some attention even though the TOMCAT-DEV community
voted to switch to the 4.0 code base for the next major release of Tomcat.
While it continues to receive attention from a few developers, I only plan
to mine some of the excellent low-level performance tuning tricks that have
been implemented there.

Although this code is there for anyone who wants to play with it (this is
open source, after all :-), the next major release of Tomcat after 3.2 will
be 4.0, based on the code that is in the "jakarta-tomcat-4.0" CVS
repository.

>
> Cheers,
>
> Simon
>

Craig McClanahan

Error in 3.2-6 : Context not properly removed

[Jochen Schneider <jo...@decrc.abb.de>]

Hi,

we are using Tomcat 3.2 Beta6 on WIN NT4.0 (SP5) and jdk1.2.2. If  I am
shutting down tomcat (using the shutdown.bat command file) not all contexts
are removed. This is a major problem since in that case the destroy method
of the servlet is not called. I have posted this problem some time ago but
didn't receive a response.

This can be reproduced even with the example applications coming with the
current tomcat installation:

1. Start tomcat using the tomcat.bat start command produces the following
output:

[d:\programs\abb\service web server\tomcat\bin]tomcat.bat run
2000-11-02 02:27:01 - ContextManager: Adding context Ctx( /admin )
Starting tomcat. Check logs/tomcat.log for error messages
2000-11-02 02:27:01 - ContextManager: Adding context Ctx( /examples )
2000-11-02 02:27:01 - ContextManager: Adding context Ctx(  )
2000-11-02 02:27:01 - ContextManager: Adding context Ctx( /test )
2000-11-02 02:27:02 - PoolTcpConnector: Starting Ajp12ConnectionHandler on
8007

2. Shutdown tomcat using the shutdown.bat command (from another comand
prompt):
2000-11-02 02:29:12 - ContextManager: Removing context Ctx( /admin )
2000-11-02 02:29:12 - ContextManager: Removing context Ctx(  )


It seems that the test and the example context is not automatically removed.
If I am debugging my own application the destroy method is never called.

I really would appreciate any help from you. Any ideas?

Regards Jochen