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To: tomcat-dev@jakarta.apache.org
Subject: Re: [LONG TERM PLAN] Proposed Architecture for Tomcat.Next Servlet
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References: <3866D000.2D544552@mytownnet.com> <3873A1A6.2685D1E2@eng.sun.com>
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From: Mike Williams <mikew@o3.co.uk>
Date: 06 Jan 2000 09:42:05 +0000
In-Reply-To: "Craig R. McClanahan"'s message of "Wed,
 05 Jan 2000 20:14:34 -0800"
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  >>> "Costin" == <Costin.Manolache@eng.sun.com>

  Costin> Instead of a major version that will have all the features and
  Costin> changes you mentioned, I would prefer a number of minor changes
  Costin> that will make incremental changes.

  >>> "Craig" == "Craig R. McClanahan" <cmcclanahan@mytownnet.com>

  Craig> I do not suggest that we build the Tomcat.Next interfaces on top
  Craig> of *any* existing Tomcat code.  Instead, I advocate that we
  Craig> refactor and rebuild it.  The existing code base is functional,
  Craig> but it has a lot of kludgey cruft in it, and almost no comments
  Craig> ...

  Craig> What do all the other Tomcat interested parties think?

Firstly, respect to the JServ team for giving us a clean, stable Servlet
platform.  And respect to Sun (and the instigators within) for putting
Tomcat under the Apache umbrella ... ensuring the success of Java Servlets.

I'm a happy user of Apache JServ.  Like Craig, I was frustrated by the
amount of time it took for the Tomcat code to be released.  My main
complaint is that the Jakarta announcement very effectively stalled
development of JServ ... if Jakarta hadn't happened, or the timeframe had
be clearer, I'm guessing we'd now have a version of JServ that implemented
version 2.2 (or at least 2.1) of the Servlet spec. Perhaps I'm wrong.

My main interest is seeing a stable, complete, open-source implementation
of Servlets-2.2, suitable for both development and production purposes. It
seems that Tomcat is *almost* there (minus class re-loading), so it seems
Reasonable to concentrate on that goal before attempting any major
re-design.

But once we're there, perhaps it's time to "re-factor" as Craig suggests,
before adding additional functionality.  If the existing Tomcat code is
badly commented, it's going to be difficult to maintain, and messy to
extend.  Another advantage of "re-factoring" is that code can be lifted
both from the current Tomcat and from JServ-1.1.  Thus Tomcat-4.x would be
an *evolution* of JServ, rather than just the recommended alternative.