The latest stable release of the JavaRebel code reloading agent includes a plugin for Spring that reloads Spring configuration on-the-fly boosting development productivity even more. See the screencast and download JavaRebel and the plugin.

For this stable JavaRebel release we have focused on two main themes: stability and extensibility. This includes the following changes from 1.1:

• Reworked core. Thanks to the numerous enhancements to the core JavaRebel can now handle any esoteric code or container there is.
• Reworked SDK. Thanks to the new API and configuration you can now make any part of your application or library code reloadable, no matter where or how is it located. SDK is available as open-source.
• JavaRebel plugins. It is now easy to support custom classloaders, containers and frameworks by registering a simple Plugin. Open-source example plugin, plugin development howto and a discussion mailing list are available at ZeroTurnaround Community.
• Equinox OSGi container, IBM WebSphere and Atlassian Confluence plugins are now supported

See the full list of changes or just download JavaRebel now.

In addition to that we have released a JavaRebel plugin for Spring that allows reloading/reinjecting Spring dependencies on-the-fly without reloading the bean factory or application context. We have prepared a screencast that demonstrates the Spring plugin features. See the plugin installation manual for more details or just download it.

Now that the infrastructure is in place we plan to provide more plugins for the most popular frameworks that enable seamless zero turnaround even when updating configuration or other resources. You are welcome to join our community and contribute a plugin for your favorite framework or platform.

After a long wait we have released the 1.1 version of JSP Weaver. The new version includes all the accumulated fixes and also adds couple of new features.

• JSP Weaver can be used to verify JSP files offline. As an automated task or a manual check on the JSP codebase.
• With special configuration it is possible to load JSP files from the CLASSPATH instead of the Servlet path. Solves the problem with complex configurations where JSP files are packaged in JAR files.

See the changelog for the full list of changes or head off to the download section to get the latest version.

As we have previously announced we are going to introduce pricing changes to JavaRebel licenses after 15th September.

The current perpetual license price will be changed to $249 per license. The volume discounts will apply as follows:

We will also introduce a new annual subscription license priced per year as follows:

A new support package with annual subscription will be introduced. The package will include direct contact with the developer team, guaranteed response times and early access to fixes and plugins.

We will continue to sell a non-transferrable personal license priced at $99. We will also continue to issue free licenses to open-source projects.

You may purchase licenses at the current price until September 15th.

This double release is a result of our active users submitting quite a few bugs. 1.1.4 includes among others fixes to regression that 1.1.3 still failed to fix, while 1.2-RC1 starts the countdown to the stable release of the 1.2.x branch. These releases also include support for time-limited licenses. Proceed to download.

There has been a lot of discussion regarding the use of JavaRebel with Eclipse Web Tools Project (WTP). JavaRebel does work with WTP but the configuration is not that straightforward. In this article we’ll try to give step by step instructions on how to make WTP and JavaRebel get along.

The article is divided into two parts. If you have JavaRebel installed under WTP you can skip to the configuration section. If you are an old time WTP user just enable autopublishing and disable auto reloading for modules.

JavaRebel Installation under WTP

Lets get started by downloading the JavaRebel zip archive from the download page. Unzip the archive somewhere on your harddisk. Copy the javarebel.jar from the uncompressed folder to a location that you can use later on. We’ll assume on Windows that this is c:\javarebel.jar and on Linux /home/john/javarebel.jar.

We’ll configure the startup of the container next. I will be using Tomcat v6.0 version. Open up the “Run Configurations” dialog from the Eclipse menu Run » Run Configurations. You should see the following dialog.

Next open the (x)= Arguments tab in the dialog and edit the VM arguments text area as seen on the next screenshot. Add the following option to the end of the area.

Windows
-noverify -javaagent:c:\javarebel.jar

Linux
-noverify -javaagent:/home/john/javarebel.jar

Now apply the settings and run the configuration. You should see the following message in the console output.

You have installed JavaRebel under WTP now. Next you need to configure some WTP options so that WTP auto publish would not interfere with JavaRebel class reloading.

WTP Specific Configurations

Automatic publishing should be enabled in the server configuration. Double click on your server name and a configuration page opens. Under the Publish section you should have the Automatically publish when resources change option selected. I’ve outlined the automatic publishing settings in the following screenshot.

All your modules should have Auto Reload disabled. You can achieve this by opening the Modules tab of the server configuration and editing each module to disable auto reloading.

This is it. Once you have these configurations in place and you have restarted the container you are ready to use JavaRebel with WTP.

Make changes to your Java source files and they will be reloaded by JavaRebel. Make changes to your static content under you WebContent and they will be copied by WTP to your deployment folder.

If you have any questions or problems about setting up WTP and JavaRebel leave a comment or send an email to support [at] zeroturnaround.com.

Eclipse 3.4 and WTP 3.0 were used to test the functionality. The article is inspired by Utilisation de JavaRebel avec Eclipse.

For the impatient: see the screencast and download.

Spring is nowadays one of the most popular frameworks for developing enterprise Java applications. It is therefore our greatest pleasure to announce that with the release of JavaRebel 1.2-M2 and the JavaRebel Spring plugin 1.0-M1 it is now possible to develop Spring applications without redeploying the container.

JavaRebel Spring plugin takes advantage of JavaRebel class reloading to reload Spring dependencies. It supports registering new Spring beans, adding/removing dependencies and adding new MVC controllers and handler methods. These can be done using either XML configuration or annotations.

We have prepared a screencast that demonstrates extending Petclinic sample application on-the-fly. You can also check out the Spring plugin installation manual or just proceed to download.

Although we have tested the plugin in several environments it should be considered a beta release and is not guaranteed to work perfectly in your application. However the plugin is open source and we welcome both your feedback and contributions to make future releases better.

Although this release has mainly bugfixes in the changelog it has a lot of changes under the hood. We have significantly changed the underlying logic so JavaRebel will handle some corner cases without troubles it may have had before. We have also updated the SDK and improved the plugin support with changes necessary to support the Spring plugin we are releasing simultaneously.

Download it right away or check out the changelog first.

The last incremental update to the stable branch fixes a few bugs and backports the OSGi support from the development branch. Check out the changelog or download it now.

UPDATE: The campaign has finished and the registration is closed. Congratulations to all who won and everyone who didn’t can still grab the discounted personal license.

This week we ran a campaign at DZone giving away 150 JavaRebel personal licenses for free. The campaign was so successful that we decided to extend it to everyone and give 50 licenses extra to those who register here first. Please provide you real name as we find it hard to apply the EULA to “Mr Chocolate Bear”.

As another part of our summer promotional campaign we will discount the personal licenses for JavaRebel to $49 until the end of summer, so if you don’t get the free license you can still grab one cheaply. This offer extends only to single seat licenses, not organizational ones.

Note also that we plan to change the JavaRebel licensing policy in the near future. The license will become a yearly subscription and will be priced differently. The details will be announced two weeks before the change, but we advice everyone who wants to take advantage of the current prices and perpetual licensing policy to make your purchase soon.

JavaRebel offers permanent licenses to all JavaBlackBelt’s brown belts. This is a personal 1 seat commercial license that you can use to speed up your Java development. If you don’t have a brown belt yet, start taking the exams. This is the fifth and currently strongest belt offered so it won’t come easily.

To apply for a free license just send a link to your brown belt profile from the email used at JavaBlackBelt to support[at]zeroturnaround dot com. We’ll get back to you with your license.

JavaBlackBelt is a community for Java & open source skills assessment. It is dedicated to technical quizzes about Java related technologies. Read the full announcement from their news archive.