I worry that putting much more than a simple link on the which version
page could cause confusion. Something like:
"For users wanting a Java EE / Jakarta EE container that supports
additional specifications like XXX see <a href="...">Apache TomEE</a>."
My preference is for a new menu item - probably under misc - called
"Related Apache Projects" (a shorter, snappier title preferred) where we
can link to the various ASF projects related to Tomcat and have a
paragraph or two on each project.
Off the top of my head, there is Ant (initially created to build
Tomcat), Commons Pool, DBCP, Modeler, Daemon (all spun off from Tomcat),
httpd, TomEE and probably a bunch I have forgotten about.
Mark
On 30/03/2022 00:25, David Blevins wrote:
On Mar 28, 2022, at 10:12 AM, Christopher Schultz
<ch...@christopherschultz.net> wrote:
David,
On 3/26/22 14:13, David Blevins wrote:
I've never had the bravery to ask
Why the heck not?
Perhaps it's a Geronimo hangover, but I never wanted to risk creating a
situation where people felt forced or inadvertently create conflict.
but would there be some willingness to consider adding a mention of
TomEE on the Tomcat website?
I'm up for it. I can't imagine anyone on the Tomcat PMC would have any
problem with this. Anyone?
Any sign of pushback and I'll happily drop -- it's far more important
to maintain good will, respect boundaries and keep things friendly.
If there was some warmness to the idea, perhaps something very subtle
at the bottom of the Tomcat description on the front page, "For
distributions of Tomcat that contain Jakarta REST, Jakarta CDI,
Jakarta Enterprise Beans (EJB) and similar specifications see Apache
TomEE."
I guess the question would be "where is the best place to put this?" Does TomEE have
versions that track Tomcat versions in any way? Or do you just use whatever version is "best
at the time of packaging" or whatever?
For example, relegating TomEE to the "download" page(s) would mean that someone
would have to know they want to download a specific Tomcat version, then decide at the
last second that they instead want TomEE. If you don't release new versions every month
(ish, like we do), then we could easily get out of sync.
It's a mix. Each TomEE major version will fix itself to a Tomcat major version.
- TomEE 7 (Java EE 7) uses Tomcat 8.5
- TomEE 8 (Java EE 8) uses Tomcat 9
- TomEE 9 (Jakarta EE 9.x) uses Tomcat 10
TomEE 9 is still in milestone, but should be released in a few months. We've
been basing our version numbers on the Java EE / Jakarta EE spec number. For
Tomcat 10.1, TomEE 10, Jakarta EE 10, they'll be pretty close and might
possibly sync perfectly at 11 -- for a while at least.
On release speed, we definitely don't keep up with Tomcat pace -- we're more
once a quarter than once a month. As well it can take us many months longer to
reach final as there's a lot more in the box to certify.
I'm thinking that maybe what we should do it put TomEE on the "Which version?" page
(https://tomcat.apache.org/whichversion.html). Below the grid of spec versions and associated
Tomcat versions, we could put a heading which says something along the lines of "Jakarta Foo +
Bar are packaged with TomEE" and just throw the user over to whatever page at TomEE makes the
most sense.
My only concern would be to properly inform users what is happening. I'm an Eclipse user and any time I have
to download a new version from their web site I have to re-learn the differences between "Eclipse IDE
for Java Developers" and "Eclipse IDE for Java and DSL Developers" and "Eclipse IDE for
Enterprise Java and Web Developers" and I guess whatever the hell Thelia is, now.
I wouldn't want anyone to inadvertently install TomEE if all they really want is Tomcat
or "only" install Tomcat when they need the additional features and APIs that
TomEE provides. Perhaps just a reference to here would be sufficient:
https://tomee.apache.org/comparison.html
I'm open to what people think is the right. The whichversion.html page idea
could be good.
A nice thing about a heading on the whichversion.html page is that it's something we can link to in
the tomcat.apache.org website, say "https://tomcat.apache.org/whichversion.html#tomee"; or
something. When twitter polls like this happen we can paste the link and hopefully not see 50% of
people saying "yes":
- https://twitter.com/brunoborges/status/1507591056086343681
There were several TomEE mentions there, but my experience is unless they see
it mentioned on the Tomcat website they often perceive it skeptically as a
competitive effort against Tomcat.
Under the heading we could have a few sentences with a bit more detail on which specs
(the most popular ones as the full list is large), perhaps the Tomcat to TomEE version
mapping, and a link to the https://tomee.apache.org/comparison.html page. Something
brief, that's no bigger (ideally smaller) than the "Alpha / Beta / Stable"
heading so as not to distract too much.
If people are up for it, a very brief mention on the main page that links to the
whichversion.html page would be effective. My gut is unless we put something there, most
people won't see it and we'll likely only educate 5% or 10% of people who say
"yes" to polls like one above.
-David
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@tomcat.apache.org
