Paul Frieden wrote:
> Not everybody is in a position to throw away their investment in the 3.x
> series just yet.
Absolutely true. That's why I went back and did 3.2, because I totally understand
this reasoning.
Some people can't even get off 3.1 yet, because Costin changed so much in 3.2
:-). That's why I went back and did a 3.1.1 release for the security fixes there,
along with a 3.2.1 fix for the current version.
But that's not the real concern of this mail thread. The issue for TOMCAT-DEV is
where should the Tomcat *developers* be spending the bulk of their time.
> While its fun to try the latest and greatest, not
> everybody can do that. Craig, is java.sun.com running on Tomcat 4.0?
Not yet, although the static part of the java.sun.com site isn't really the target
for a servlet container -- the various back-end application systems is where you
will see it before the home page.
>
> Jon, is www.apache.org running Apache 2.0 yet? When do you think they
> will be ready to run those packages?
Pretty soon.
>
>
> While this may be a "reference implementation," it is still being used
> in production environments. Production environments have very different
> requirements than development environments. Does Tomcat 3.x have bugs?
> Absolutely. But we've found those bugs in our QA environment,
> identified them, and worked around them as needed. Tomcat 4.0 will have
> a whole new set of bugs that we will need to spend time working around.
> We're still running our sites on 3.1, because we haven't had time to
> re-do the verification work with 3.2 yet.
>
> I'm just saying that while Tomcat 4.0 may have the most perfect design,
> it is un-proven in production environments. Tomcat 3.x has been proven
> for our application.
>
Well, 3.1 has proven itself for you. You will find 3.2 has it's own flock of
different bugs too. Same for "3.3" -- on the insides, each of these versions has
had significant changes.
>
> We need to continue the 3.x tree at least until 4.0 is proven as ready.
> That takes time. 3.x has been brewing for a very long time. There have
> been lots of changes, but more has stayed the same than has changed.
> Tomcat 4.0 is almost entirely new code. We need something we can count
> on for production. Tomcat 4.0 isn't there yet.
>
Anyone who's seen my posts over the last year knows that I recommend Tomcat 3.x
(current released version, nowdays 3.2 series) for production use. Tomcat 4.0 is
currently alpha code (although just about to start a beta cycle).
The question at hand, though, relates to future significant enhancements (as
opposed to just bug fixes, which I'm still willing to integrate in 3.2.x). You
would find 3.2-->3.3 to be just as in need of revalidation as 3.2-->4.0, because
it's not just a simple maintanenance fix to 3.2.
Now, do we split the community's attention by devoting substantial development
efforts to two tracks simultaneously, or do we focus most of the "big
improvements" effort in one direction and do the required maintenance on the
current production release? Because this is a volunteer organization, people can
certainly choose to work on what they want -- but how are you going to feel if you
spend a lot of time working on "3.3" but the TOMCAT-DEV community decides not to
release it (given the proposed timing, it risks becoming irrelevant no matter how
good or bad it might be)?
Costin has stated several times that he prefers not to work on 4.0. That's his
choice. For him, and the other folks that want to work on the "3.3" code base
(I'm using quotes because there has been no formal discussion or vote on a plan to
create it yet), they are free to do what they want with the code -- but if they
want to release the finished work as "Tomcat", they've got to sell the TOMCAT-DEV
community (i.e. the committers who have voting rights) on that plan.
>
> I also think that its appalling that people should tell Costin to go
> away. The Apache project should be very very thankful that they have
> somebody around to maintain the code that others have abandoned. Where
> would we be if the latest stable version of Apache was 1.3.0, and all
> the other developers had run off to work on 2.0? If that had happened,
> the Apache project would have been dismissed by everybody as a toy, and
> Apache wouldn't be in the position it is in today.
>
Costin is to be thanked for all the efforts he has put in to get Tomcat from where
it was at contribution time (October 99) into something that was usable. His
efforts to improve performance along the way have proven to be quite successful as
well.
But, prospective "3.3" users should also be aware ... this time, if it ever did
get released, I'm not going to be there to clean up Costin's bugs (as I had to do
on both 3.1 and 3.2). I've got better things to do.
By the way, Tomcat 4.0 will be the web container in the next release of the Java2
Enterprise Edition (J2EE) reference implementation. As such, it is receiving the
benefit of extensive testing within Sun, in addition to all the testing done by
the open source community.
>
> Paul Frieden
>
Craig McClanahan
