Mark,
On 3/29/22 19:40, Mark Thomas wrote:
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>."
+1
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.
I like this. What else might qualify? If it's really only TomEE (and
flavors thereof), we could name that section "Enterprise .. something".
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.
Digester, another Tomcat graduate.
Other than TomEE (and httpd), those are all dependencies / upstream from
Tomcat, which IMO puts TomEE in a slightly different bucket. I would say
that httpd isn't really "related" to Tomcat other than (a) they are both
ASF projects and (b) they are both web servers. But there's also ATS,
ATC and probably one or two other web servers under ASF umbrella I
haven't heard of yet.
Thanks,
-chris
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
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscr...@tomcat.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-h...@tomcat.apache.org
