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Bug 103349 - Please, reintroduce Tomcat with NetBeans 6
Summary: Please, reintroduce Tomcat with NetBeans 6
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: serverplugins
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Tomcat (show other bugs)
Version: 6.x
Hardware: PC Linux
: P2 blocker with 32 votes (vote)
Assignee: Sherold Dev
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2007-05-04 23:38 UTC by vbrabant
Modified: 2007-07-04 10:02 UTC (History)
12 users (show)

See Also:
Issue Type: ENHANCEMENT
Exception Reporter:


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Description vbrabant 2007-05-04 23:38:16 UTC
Today, I tried the Standard version of MileStone 9 of Netbeans, and I noted that
there was no bundled Tomcat included therein.

A lot of people are using and prefering the bundled (light) Tomcat compared to
the (loud) SJAS, certainly when you are doing simple Web Applications (without
need of a complete Java EE application server).

So, I am asking, if possible, to reintroduce a bundled version of Tomcat (can be
tomcat6) in NetBeans 6.

thanks a lot.
Comment 1 _ avbravo 2007-05-05 16:59:28 UTC
tomcat is very important for web application.  many servants web uses it 
Comment 2 alexismp 2007-05-07 08:04:00 UTC
For web development and specifically for incremental deployment I don't think
SJS AS is any slower than Tomcat. Startup time is better with Tomcat though.
Comment 3 kirillkh 2007-05-16 08:17:14 UTC
alexismp, sorry, but I can hardly believe that, considering all the features
SJAS has and Tomcat doesn't. But this is irrelevant, since I just want my
default web-server to be Tomcat, which is the de-facto standard for web
development. I think many other people, including new users, will say they
expect the same thing. Most of the people have never used SJAS. No one wants to
start testing its performance, quirks and compatibility with existing
applications just for the sake of using it in NB.
Comment 4 valeredejardin 2007-05-16 08:44:09 UTC
The great quality of netbeans over others IDEs, (eclipse if you want a name) has
been the great quality of its Tomcat integration. No need for an additional
download. No need for another install. No need for configuration. Just create a
web project and press run. For years it has been one of the first demo I was
executingto people that did not know NB.

We definitely need tomcat back inside the standard distribution of the IDE, or
at least (but to my mind even this would be a great regression) as an additional
module in update center.

Tomcat footprint is not that big in the download size. And also, the marketing
idea here (removing TC from the distribution only to promote glassfish) is
simply stinking.

Valère
Comment 5 normandavid67 2007-05-16 08:56:03 UTC
I am glad I did not upgrade to Netbeans 6. 
I do not understand why Bundled Tomcat was removed.

BRING TOMCAT BACK TO NETBEANS.
Comment 6 vbrabant 2007-05-16 08:57:52 UTC
Another possibility:
Via the NetBeans Installer, propose both Tomcat 6 and SJAS
(by the way, I prefered to see Glassfish, in place of SJAS. Or at least,
indicate clearly which glasfish version is corresponding to the one of SJAS.
It's never clear for me to find the correlation between version nr of SJAS and
the one of glassfish.)
And let people choose which one they want to download.

P.S. for the moment, issue is always marked as new. It means that it's not yet
accepted. How much votes you need to be considered as accepted ? I will do
lobbying via javalobby, blogs and so on to ask for the reintroduction of tomcat.
Comment 7 kirillkh 2007-05-16 09:26:12 UTC
Re vbrabant: what about the [hudson] trunk builds? They don't have installers,
just the zip file. I'm not against providing two options (or, rather,
checkboxes, so that both can be chosen) in the installer, but I see no reason
not to include Tomcat in the default configuration, since it is heavily used.
The trunk builds case won't matter to new users, but it would matter to me, when
I'm installing NB on a different machine or with a new user dir.
Comment 8 Pavel Buzek 2007-05-16 22:22:13 UTC
BTW, there is an issue 90908 for this (or at least related to this).
Comment 9 orisun 2007-05-17 11:35:19 UTC
tomcat...
tomcat
Comment 10 vbrabant 2007-05-17 12:22:48 UTC
Somes figures:

1. Installation of SJSAS is 99Mo. Comparing to installation of Tomcat (6.5Mo) ,
it's a HUGE difference.
2. I have a very simple and stupid project with one "HelloWorld" servlet. Right
clicking on the servlet and click on Run, it took 1minutes and 6 seconds to see
the result of the servlet in the browser. The same with Tomcat took 9 seconds.
3. Starting Tomcat (Runtime|Tomcat|Run) takes 1750ms, Starting SJSAS takes 10
seconds.
4. Starting Tomcat in debug mode takes 2610ms; Starting SJSAS in debug mode
takes 11 seconds
5. debugging the simple and stupid HelloWorld servlet in Tomcat takes 10
seconds. With SJSAS, it takes 38 seconds (I suppose difference with Run is that
the browser has not been launched).


Are those numbers sufficient to convince the necessity to have also Tomcat6. Why
not propose BOTH Tomcat AND Glassfish ?
Comment 11 Petr Jiricka 2007-05-17 13:13:51 UTC
> for the moment, issue is always marked as new. It means that it's not yet
> accepted.

FYI, NetBeans uses issuezilla status "new" to mean that the work on implementing
this has not started yet. Status "started" means that someone is working on
this. There is no way to distinguish "accepted" issues.

Regarding the startup times, it is true that Tomcat is currently faster. This is
one thing that GlassFish v3 will address. v3 preview can be downloaded here:
https://glassfish.dev.java.net/downloads/v3-techPreview-1.html. There is also a
NetBeans plugin available on the NB 6 update center (you need a NB 6 daily
build, not the preview version).

I would be interested to know what people think about v3.

Comment 12 kirillkh 2007-05-17 13:39:42 UTC
It looks more and more like Sun is really trying to gain some Glassfish market
share in this way (and I apologize in advance, if it turns out I was too quick
to arrive at that conclusion).

Sun, this is a bad decision in all senses, including marketing. Rather than
winning Glassfish market share at the expense of NetBeans users' convenience,
you will lose some of these users and make others really upset. I personally
hate it, when someone is trying to push their agenda by stepping right on my
interests. I believe many other people feel the same. Also, how can you expect
to get an active community, when your decisions directly contradict its interests?
Comment 13 giorgio42 2007-05-18 09:53:13 UTC
I sincerely hope, that the move to discontinue out-of-the box support for Tomcat
in NB 6 isn't driven by the desire to push Glassfish adoption.

That would be extremely arrogant in the first place. It would mean that the
developers of 2007 have to pay the price for Sun not taking web application
deployment seriously until Glassfish (nobody wants me to outline the reputation
of Sun's  pre-Glassfish offerings here...). Instead of people beginnging to love
Glassfish they will start to hate NetBeans.

We have been using Tomcat since 3.2.1 (no glassfish at that time). Lots of
people have lots of experience with it. It is an official company standard.

I am one of the few people in our company that are even aware that something
like Glassfish exists.


In more general terms it really concerns me that obviously there are some people
out there who control  NetBeans's fate, which have no contact to reality in any
way (and no interest in working the the NB user community, too).

Comment 14 vupham 2007-05-18 17:20:44 UTC
My current apps are using Tomcat and I still plan using Tomcat for next apps.
I would like to have Tomcat integrated with Netbeans.
Comment 15 Pavel Buzek 2007-05-18 18:33:57 UTC
Some people seem to be very misinformed. NetBeans 6.0 WILL support integration
with tomcat 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0, there is no discussion about that. Besides that we
support various versions of glassfish, web logic and jboss. We would love to
support other servers if we had more cycles, this is purely a resource and
priority issue of the developers paid by Sun, but anyone is very welcome to
contribute...

Here we are not talking about integration with Tomcat but about installation of
Tomcat and registration into NetBeans. The main point of having a server bundled
with IDE is that new users have a way to get started right away. We do the same
with a database, JPA library, JSF implementation, Struts library, etc. etc. The
point is not that all users will get the server/database/library of their
preference installed - we cannot bundle everything. Glassfish satisfies this
need not only for web applications but also for EJB, J2EE applications,
application clients, etc., unlike Tomcat. I fully expect that experienced users
will get whatever server they want. Manual download, installation and
registration of Tomcat into NetBeans takes less then 5 minutes. You can even
select which version of Tomcat you get, obviously we have always bundled only
one version with NetBeans.

We are listening to your feedback. We are looking at various ways to address
this issue to make it easier to install and register tomcat, hope the above
explanation helps in the mean time.
Comment 16 mclaassen 2007-05-18 18:50:43 UTC
I see your point and now I am a bit on the fence.

Beginners to Java may not know exactly Tomcat can do for them and what it
cannot.  Having two ways to do some things (like servlets) and only one way to
do others (like EJBs) might make the product seem confusing.

Yet, from someone who doesn't use an application server (at least, not yet), I
have always appreciated that Tomcat just worked "out of the box" with NB.  We
have more than one developer, so having it integrated really saves me time in
not having to setup other PCs and making sure everything works right.

There are three install bundles already on the download site.  I would imagine
someone will cringe at the idea of a fourth one, but that might be satisfactory
solution to many.


Comment 17 David Strupl 2007-05-18 19:29:54 UTC
I am sorry but I don't understand. Will there be bundled download NB + Tomcat?
If yes I am happy. If not I don't understand why. Please read again the argument
about 99 MB glassfish download vs. 6.5 MB Tomcat. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Comment 18 Pavel Buzek 2007-05-18 20:22:03 UTC
Davide,

1. Where did you get 99MB? Where did Vincent get it? It's between 63 and 70 MB
depending on platform, see
https://glassfish.dev.java.net/downloads/v2-b41d.html. Still much more then
6.5MB for tomcat, of course, but you are comparing apples to oranges.

2. I gave you my explanation that we need a server out of the box. If you follow
the logic that user A wants this and user B wants that we would also need to
bundle jboss? Perhaps also need to bundle mysql and postgres in addition to
javadb? Hibernate in addition to toplink? Please read my previous point. I am
trying to explain that 6.5MB is not the only criteria.

When I said we are considering various options, here is one that will make it
easier to register tomcat in 6.0:
http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=97567

Another possibility is to do what Glassfish v3 plugin does (it is on update
center for daily builds). When you choose to add v3 it will offer you to
actually download and install it for you at that point. Again, we are just
looking at that, nothing decided.

If anybody wants to create another NetBeans bundle with more components that may
be a way too.

Tomcat on update center is another option.
.....
Comment 19 Roman Strobl 2007-05-18 21:00:40 UTC
Here's my 20 Euro cents...

I strongly believe that we need to provide users with two options during
installation process:

1. Download NetBeans with bundled Glassfish V2 (default)
2. Download NetBeans with bundled Tomcat

It is too early to replace Tomcat by Glassfish completely, because currently
Glassfish V2 has too slow startup time and requires more resources than Tomcat.
This situation will change with Glassfish V3. When Glassfish V3 becomes stable
we can most probably stop bundling Tomcat, because there will be probably no big
advantage of doing so.

Glassfish should be the default option in the installation process (it is ok to
promote Glassfish together with NetBeans - they work great together and they are
the best solution for complete Java EE development). However I think developers
should have the choice to choose Tomcat as well in 6.0. Not bundling Tomcat is a
regression in our out of the box story given how popular Tomcat currently is for
lightweight web development in Java. Glassfish V2 is currently too heavyweight
to be a good replacement at this very moment.

When V3 becomes stable enough it will be time to revisit this topic and I
believe Tomcat will no longer be necessary, since Glassfish V3 will start fast
enough, will be modular, lightweight and it will just be better to use Glassfish
than Tomcat.

In my opinion this change came too early.

If for any reason we decide not to bundle Tomcat let's at least make it really
easy to install it by providing Tomcat modules on the update center.
Comment 20 kirillkh 2007-05-18 21:30:34 UTC
pbuzek,

1. I think dstrupl was talking about the total download size of glassfish+netbeans.

2. People voting for this issue are voting for having tomcat *bundled* with the
IDE, not for having it supported. Perhaps there's someone misguided, but the
summary is pretty clear about what it asks and most of the people here can
understand the difference.

3. Let's say the truth: it is very clear that the reason you are going to only
bundle Glassfish and not any other appserver is to promote it. I hope no one
will argue with that. This fact alone is perfectly fine with me. I am a happy
Sun software user, so I want its products to succeed. The problem starts, when,
after looking at your download logs and doing some surveys, you come to
conclusion that if you make Glassfish the only bundled server coming in the
default NB install, it'll earn you a large user base. So you take something I've
been used to and tell me that now from your standpoint Tomcat is just another
appserver, not the most feature-reach at that, and there's no reason to bundle
it. This is all how it looks like: that you are taking something pretty
essential out of NB because of your (completely irrelevant to me) marketing
decisions, not because this would make the product better. Of course I don't
like this decision just because of its arrogance, and I haven't even started on
real reasons why I want Tomcat bundled. So far, no one has said a word that
would make this sound less correct. Someone should better start thinking how to
make this theory not only sound, but *be* false, void and invalid.

4. While I think it would be best, if the download page had a checkbox for each
of the optional features, such as db or appserver, I don't see it currently
required. I want Tomcat. Other 33 users who voted want Tomcat. There were no
voices to bundle anything else, including Glassfish. New users *also* want
Tomcat - there is a whole category of new users you seem to have forgotten
about, who are not new to web development, but new to NetBeans. Many of these
users have heard that NB has a good out-of-box experience in JavaEE. And what
they mean by that is integration with Tomcat. Glassfish won't be able to replace
it, until the fact that it's well-performing and on par with Tomcat in other
ways, is taken as granted in wide circles. But even if someone has heard of
Glassfish and agrees that it's a high-quality product, still this person is very
likely to want to mainly run their application in Tomcat in order to be sure it
works there, since Tomcat is such an important platform. Also, what works on
Tomcat, usually works the same on other appservers. Who knows, will it be the
same with Glassfish?

So, my opinion is - bundle Tomcat for as long as it is so popular. I don't mind
Glassfish being the default selection in the combo box. But I do care, whether
Tomcat will also be present in the zipped distributions, including daily builds
and hudson builds. Please also provide Tomcat as a module on UC, so that
everyone who didn't choose it during install-time can install it later.
Comment 21 David Strupl 2007-05-18 22:15:02 UTC
> Davide,
> 1. Where did you get 99MB?

From Vincent ;-)

> Where did Vincent get it?

No idea but I have believed him.

> It's between 63 and 70 MB depending on platform, see

Still a difference.

> https://glassfish.dev.java.net/downloads/v2-b41d.html. Still much more then
> 6.5MB for tomcat, of course, but you are comparing apples to oranges.

No, I am not comparing apples to oranges. Believe it or not but I think there is
a lot of people who actually don't need J2EE server. Servlet container is enough
for a large set of tasks. I have been using Tomcat since 3.x days and don't plan
to migrate anything to J2EE server.

> 2. I gave you my explanation that we need a server out of the box. 

I am not against it.

> If you follow the logic that user A wants this and user B wants that we would
also need to bundle jboss?

Did someone compare Jboss to glassfish without the "it's coming from us" bias?

> Perhaps also need to bundle mysql and postgres in addition to
> javadb?

Here you compare apples to oranges. JDBC should shield you from the differnce
between the DB's. We both know that it does not but as an approximation it does.

> Hibernate in addition to toplink?

Why do you bundle toplink at all? Autoupdate would work, wouldn't it? Aha, I
forgot that it is part of the RI of the J2EE stack. Hmmm, again we are at the
very subtle question whether people need the J2EE stack. Maybe they do. I don't
know. My opinion is that it is a bloatware but I am the only one so I give up.

> ...

> If anybody wants to create another NetBeans bundle with more components that
> may be a way too.

Are you advocating a fork in the NB distribution using e.g. SourceForge? Not a
good idea IMHO.

David
Comment 22 David Strupl 2007-05-18 22:20:21 UTC
> I strongly believe that we need to provide users with two options during
> installation process:

> 1. Download NetBeans with bundled Glassfish V2 (default)
> 2. Download NetBeans with bundled Tomcat

What are the reasons for not doing this? Pavle, can you shed some light why this
is a bad idea? Then you can watch the download numbers and have some munition
for the next debates.
Comment 23 vbrabant 2007-05-20 23:37:46 UTC
>>FYI, NetBeans uses issuezilla status "new" to mean that the work on 
>> implementing this has not started yet. Status "started" means that 
>> someone is working on this. There is no way to distinguish 
>> "accepted" issues.
Sorry therefore. Reason of my remark was that the second option is called
"Accept Issue". And for me, "Accept Issue" means that the issue is accepted. Not
necessary that someone is currently working on it. I though that "Accept Issue"
means the issue is accepted as valid (it's not an invalid one, or wontfix one,
or some other state you can imagine).


>>Davide,

>>1. Where did you get 99MB? Where did Vincent get it? It's between 63 and 70 MB
>>depending on platform, see
>>https://glassfish.dev.java.net/downloads/v2-b41d.html. 

The 99MB size is coming from your netbeans installer. When you run the standard
netbeans installer for the second time (first time, you didn't install the
SJSAS), and decide to install only the SJSAS, it says it will takes 99Mo. And it
was under Windows XP. Are those numbers wrong ? 

>>Still much more then
>>6.5MB for tomcat, of course, but you are comparing apples to oranges.
I agree with you that Tomcat and SJSAS are not the same products. SJSAS provide
more features. That's for sure. But why I have out of the box ONLY a complete
99Mb SJSAS that need a greater launch time, ... when in general, a light 6.5Mb
Tomcat is totally sufficient ?


>>2. I gave you my explanation that we need a server out of the box. 
>>If you follow the logic that user A wants this and user B wants that 
>> we would also need to bundle jboss? Perhaps also need to bundle 
>> mysql and postgres in addition to javadb? 
>> Hibernate in addition to toplink? 
>> Please read my previous point. I am
>> trying to explain that 6.5MB is not the only criteria.

- I have to say that NetBeans was always delivered with a bundled Tomcat server
since version 3.0. So, delivering NetBeans without a bundled Tomcat, was firstly
a psychologic shock. Secondly, it was a size problem, but mainly a launch-time
problem.
- You offered in the past a "cobundle NetBeans IDE with JBOSS", like you offered
in the past a "cobundle NetBeans IDE with SJSAS", and a "cobundle NetBeans IDE
with JDK".

- Maybe I am wrong, but JavaDB has never been delivered out of the box with
NetBeans, except somes beta versions of NetBeans 5.0 (but it was not a final
version). But if I am configuring correctly netbeans by indicating where is the
JavaDB engine (given with the JDK 6) I will have out of the box support, like
Starting and Stopping the JavaDB.

- If the size (6.5Mb<->99Mb) is not so important, why having 3 installers with
basic one of 20Mo ? Why not only one installer with all the modules ?

>>When I said we are considering various options, here is one that will make it
>>easier to register tomcat in 6.0:
>>http://www.netbeans.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=97567
>>
>>Another possibility is to do what Glassfish v3 plugin does (it is on update
>>center for daily builds). When you choose to add v3 it will offer you to
>>actually download and install it for you at that point. Again, we are just
>>looking at that, nothing decided.
Problem with Glassfish v3 is that it's not yet released (only alpha version are
available). So, testing a milestone of netbeans 6 with an alpha version of
Glassfish 3 will not help us to know what's the root of the problem, in case of
trouble.

>>If anybody wants to create another NetBeans bundle with more 
>>components that may be a way too.
Not sure it's the best way to solve the problem we have here. The official
NetBeans release is the one people can find on the netbeans website, and
supported by netbeans team. I am not sure it's a solution to provide a
unofficial netbeans bundle.

>>Tomcat on update center is another option.
But not an easy one when you have to install and distribute it on all
classroom's pc and that the new update center is not doing anymore the
difference between global and user's installation and that the feature to save
the selected nbm files is not existing anymore in th new plugin manager (at
least, until now, not yet finded)
Comment 24 jxt 2007-05-21 13:59:06 UTC
> Here's my 20 Euro cents...

And here's my 20 x 1.4 American cents response :-)

> It is too early to replace Tomcat by Glassfish completely, because currently
> Glassfish V2 has too slow startup time and requires more resources than
> Tomcat. This situation will change with Glassfish V3. When Glassfish V3
> becomes stable we can most probably stop bundling Tomcat, because there
> will be probably no big advantage of doing so.

Only time will tell, but even then, I predict that I would still argue to keep 
Tomcat. Here's why: NetBeans should serve not only developers who are 
developing products using NetBeans, but also *our* customers. And you see, my 
customers use, trust, and understand Tomcat. They don't want to learn how to 
maintain and manage another servlet container. Notice that I said "servlet 
container." For this customer, my "web apps" are nothing more than plain old 
servlets. No big Jave EE stack -- just servlets. And Tomcat suits this 
customer's needs just fine. They have no reason and no desire to move to 
anything else -- even if Glassfish v3 is just as good/small/fast as Tomcat. 
(Better -- demonstrably better, not just as good as -- *might* be another 
story with this customer, but frankly, I doubt it.) Again, they don't want to 
learn about another "application server" if the one they have is doing the job.

So, because I develop "web apps" for this customer who is entrenched with 
Tomcat, then NetBeans best meets *my* needs by making Tomcat development such 
an easy out-of-the-box experience, as it has since I first switched from plain 
VI and ANT, and in fact, was one of the reasons that I switched. It's not that 
I, a direct customer of NetBeans, am resistant to switching to Glassfish, but 
that *my* customers want Tomcat. It is these "pass-through" customers of 
NetBeans that NetBeans must also serve.

The big advantage of bundling Tomcat remains because so many users want it -- 
both direct and pass-through users. Because the pass-through users want 
Tomcat, it remains perfectly valid for the direct customers to want Tomcat.

> Not bundling Tomcat is a regression in our out of the box story given
> how popular Tomcat currently is for lightweight web development in Java.
> Glassfish V2 is currently too heavyweight to be a good replacement at
> this very moment.

Amen!

> When V3 becomes stable enough it will be time to revisit this topic and
> I believe Tomcat will no longer be necessary, since Glassfish V3 will
> start fast enough, will be modular, lightweight and it will just be
> better to use Glassfish than Tomcat.

Again, only time will tell, but I predict that my customer mentioned above 
will still want deployment onto Tomcat. Depending on how many other NetBeans 
users have similar needs, then bundling Tomcat should still be considered a 
critical component of an excellent NetBeans experience.
Comment 25 Erno Mononen 2007-05-21 14:23:03 UTC
>Why do you bundle toplink at all? Autoupdate would work, wouldn't it? Aha, I
>forgot that it is part of the RI of the J2EE stack. Hmmm, again we are at the
>very subtle question whether people need the J2EE stack. Maybe they do. I don't
>know. My opinion is that it is a bloatware but I am the only one so I give up.

Just to set this straight, the bundled TopLink is the reference implementation 
of JPA, which is a stand-alone specification and can be used in Java SE 
applications as well.
Comment 26 vbrabant 2007-05-21 21:59:20 UTC
Just for your information, I wanted to share with you that link:
http://blogs.sun.com/nazrul/entry/glassfish_javaone
(Why should I look at GlassFish ?)


Vincent
Comment 27 nleck 2007-05-21 23:34:55 UTC
please don't try to force us to switch servlet containers. Tomcat works very
well it is nice and small. It has matured over the years to be very reliable. 

Please just put put it back in. 
Comment 28 deeptinker 2007-07-04 06:43:42 UTC
The milestone 6.0 M10 and recent daily builds *do* include Tomcat 6.0.13 in the full installer.  However to actually
install it, one must click on the Customize button on the first screen and choose Tomcat.  (It is the only option not
already chosen by default.)  The installation instructions are quite clear on how to get it installed.  The installer
also allows one to go back and install it later with out disturbing the components previously installed.

Thanks much to whomever added Tomcat back in.

Travis
Comment 29 deeptinker 2007-07-04 06:45:30 UTC
I forgot to mention in my previous message that the installation instructions state that Tomcat is also in the standard
install package.
Comment 30 Sherold Dev 2007-07-04 10:02:29 UTC
Marking as fixed.