On Fri, 4 May 2001, Endre Stølsvik wrote:
> On Thu, 3 May 2001, Milt Epstein wrote:
>
> | Maybe your app could use some reorganizing.
>
> Yeah, maybe, Milt.
>
> Why don't you ask the developers, then? I actually believe that all
> things I said in those mails about reloading in TC3.x and TC4 are
> correct.
Because I have no reason to. I have had success with reloading with
3.2.1 (and so have others, as reported on the list) -- so I don't
think all your comments were accurate. I believe that includes
changes to auxiliary, non-servlet classes, but I don't recall exactly.
Next time I have occasion to try, I'll report the results (if I
remember :-). I have heard that reloading with 4.X is more
problematic (and may not work at all), but I haven't tried it yet
myself.
I did at one time have problems with ClassCastExceptions (and similar,
having to do with native code), but with a little bit of reorganizing,
I was able to get around it. (Admittedly my apps are not the most
complex, nor do I currently make extensive use of objects in sessions.)
> And the reason for me having to restart every time is that I
> basically have made a "server" running "on top of tomcat", and
> there's basically only 3 servlets running, but with lots of helper
> classes and stuff around.
>
> The reason for _always_ getting a ClassCastException is that I have
> all my user information stored in a User object. This won't ever
> reload (that is, serialize/deserialize, or in some other way being
> "cast" over to the new classloader), and when i retrieve it from the
> HttpSession, it's _always_ ClassCastException'ing.
>
> I'm not the only one making such "complicated" apps. The exact same
> story about the "User object" have been mentioned a couple of times
> on this list.
Likely true. And I'm sure if it was happening to me (and it may in
the future :-), I'd be annoyed as well. And, FWIW, servlet reloading
seems a more straightforward thing that should be working -- handling
all the ClassCastExceptions seems a more complex issue (although if
what you say is true, and is the norm, having plain servlet reloading
without handling the ClassCastException issues won't do some people
any good).
The thing that bothered me is that you were ranting and raving about
the problems without a deep technical understanding of the issues,
without appreciation for what the tomcat developers have done, and
without offering to contribute. Tomcat is not a commercial product
where you should be expecting (and/or demanding) more. The developers
may be sticking to more "core" features that they need to get working
to implement the spec (I believe reloading is not part of the spec).
Have you tried checking out the tomcat-dev list to see what they have
to say about it there? Seems that would be more constructive.
Milt Epstein
Research Programmer
Software/Systems Development Group
Computing and Communications Services Office (CCSO)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
