[ANNOUNCEMENT] Tomcat 3.3 Release Candidate 1

[Larry Isaacs <La...@sas.com>]

The first Release Candidate of Tomcat 3.3 is available for download 
and testing.  As a Tomcat 3.x release, it remains an implementation 
of the Servlet 2.2 and JSP 1.1 specifications. 

With this release, the core code for Tomcat 3.3 is considered
finished and only minor bug fixes, simple usability enhancements,
and documentation updates will occur up until the second Release
Candidate.  For who are using a 3.2.x version, you should find this
release more stable that the 3.2.x releases, as well as more
configurable. It also addresses some issues still present in 3.2.x
releases, such as:

    No forced response.flushBuffer() in RequestDispatcher.include()
    Each web application can use its own XML parser.

I will be working hard to finish updating the documentation. Most of
the updates so far have been in the following documents:

<http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-3.3-doc/tomcat-ug.html>
<http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-3.3-doc/serverxml.html>
<http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/tomcat-3.3-doc/readme>

There should be enough information here to take advantage of
most of the features of Tomcat 3.3.  Still to be updated are the
various "how-to" documents.  A lot of the information present
is still accurate, but some isn't.  You may want to check the
online documentation if you have a question or problem. I will
be updating it as it changes.

If you did not try the earlier 3.3 releases, the following 
additional information may help you make full use of this
release: 

1) The binary distribution has source for the connectors, but not for 
   the Tomcat container.  The source from the full jakarta-tomcat CVS 
   tree is available separately in the "v3.3-rc1/src" directory. 

2) The new class loader scheme in this release ignores your CLASSPATH 
   setting. Instead, you may add needed jars to Tomcat's "lib/apps", 
   "lib/common", and "lib/container" directories. See the tomcat-ug.html
   file in Tomcat's "doc" directory for details. 
   Also supported are two System properties: 
       org.apache.tomcat.apps.classpath 
       org.apache.tomcat.common.classpath 
   which add their listed classes and jars to the jars in "lib/apps" 
   and "lib/common", respectively. 

3) The "sanity-test" is not part of the binary distribution like it was 
   with Tomcat 3.2.  However, it is available in "War" form (test.war), 
   along with the Watchdog JSP (watchdog-jsp.war) and servlet tests 
   (watchdog-servlet.war).  These are found in the "v3.3-rc1/apps" 
   directory.  Place these War files in Tomcat's "webapps" directory 
   before starting Tomcat. To simplify testing, these tests can be run 
   from the Admin web application. See the "readme" file in Tomcat's 
   "doc" directory for details. 

Please download this release and give it a try in your environment.  The 
source, rpms, and binaries may be found at: 

    http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-tomcat/release/v3.3-rc1

Note: As of this moment, the RPM's, linux, and netware connectors have
not been added to the web site. They will appear in the near future.

To log problems or bugs, as well as submit patches, please refer to: 

    http://jakarta.apache.org/site/bugs.html 

When logging bugs to Bugzilla, please specify the Product as "Tomcat 3" 
and the Version as "3.3 Release Candidate 1". Also, supplying a test case
will greatly improve our ability to address the problem.  Please do so if
at all possible. 

Thanks, 
Larry Isaacs