Dear Java Community,

For some time we at ZeroTurnaround have been working on decreasing development turnaround time. Our flagship product, JavaRebel, has more or less solved the problem of reloading all changes made to Java code on-the-fly. However, this is not enough.

Java frameworks use configuration files, annotations and other methods to configure themselves. This is where JavaRebel loses its effect as configuration is always cached somewhere and usually not reloaded until the application is redeployed. This can be overcome by tighter integration with these frameworks.

With the release of JavaRebel 1.1 M1 we finally have full support for annotation reloading. We have also released an open source SDK that can be included in any open source project. The SDK will trigger registered listeners when the classes are reloaded allowing custom handling to occur. The integration is then just a matter of reloading configuration in development mode.

Using the annotation reloading and the SDK we have so far succeeded in integrating with Google Guice and Stripes Framework. Now almost all changes made to the applications using those frameworks are reloaded instantly. In addition to that Ignacio Coloma grabbed the SDK almost before its release and integrated the Loom web framework during the weekend. All three integrations took less than a day’s work.

It is our belief that providing such integration will greatly benefit the whole of the Java community. It is not unlikely that one day JavaRebel-like functionality will make it to the JVM and the users will be able to benefit from the integration without using a third-party product. Until then we invite you to help us define an open API for the class reloading and implement the integration for the framework you like, use or develop.

If you are a developer or a user of a Java framework of some sort and you would like to see the on-the-fly reloading in that framework happen you need to step up and make some noise in the community. We will continue investing into integration with frameworks, but we are limited by the frameworks that we know or our clients demand.

To facilitate the exchange of ideas and information we have setup a community mailing list and a Google Code project. Both framework developers and users are welcome to join and discuss what can be done to further improve Java development turnaround time.

To support this vision we are now giving free JavaRebel licenses to all open source developers.

Cheers,
ZeroTurnaround Team

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 at 6:50 pm and is filed under blog, news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.