I've watched with great interest the recent list discussions surrounding
javax -> jakarta renaming and the draft release numbering plan. I'm
curious: Would the Tomcat team consider making a Tomcat release that
supports BOTH the javax and jakarta package names?
Please hear me out before dismissing this as completely insane. Shortly
after Mark published his Tomcat "jakarta" branch, I built it and fired
up our very large webapp (LabKey Server). Of course, it didn't run,
given it was compiled against the javax API (I see approximately 25,000
references to javax.servlet.* in our code). As an experiment, I then
built a jar that restores javax.* implementation classes that we care
about and added some new classes that adapt the jakarta packaged objects
coming from Tomcat to the javax packaged objects that our webapp
expects. I dropped that jar into <tomcat>/lib, without touching any
Tomcat or LabKey code, and our webapp started up, with Filters initing
and filtering, Servlets servicing, requests being served, pages
rendering, etc. The work is incomplete (e.g., most of our pre-compiled
JSPs were unhappy with this initial attempt... though I have ideas
there), but it provides a reasonable proof of concept, IMO. You can
inspect the prototype layer here:
https://github.com/labkey-adam/jakarta-javax
Why bother offering a Tomcat release that supports both package names?
To provide a much needed transition option for those who deploy Tomcat
webapps. I'm not particularly concerned about my team's development
effort to accommodate the rename (search & replace, upgrade Spring and
other dependencies). I'm much more concerned about the hundreds of
organizations that deploy our webapp. As we've transitioned our clients
through all previous Tomcat upgrades, we've never required a
simultaneous upgrade of both Tomcat and LabKey; we've always offered
them the ability to upgrade our product and its dependencies
independently, over the course of months or even years. A major Tomcat
release upgrade may be a fairly trivial task to you and me, but it's a
very big deal to the research organizations that use our system,
particularly given their need to adhere to strict healthcare compliance
regulations and validation procedures.
I'd be curious to hear if other developers have concerns about their
customers' ability to make this transition and if there's interest in
exploring a dual-package release (or sanctioned add-on). I'd be happy to
help with the development and testing of such a solution.
Thanks,
Adam
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