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Apache Tomcat 4.1.2 for
JavaTM Web Services Developer Pack 1.0
FCS
Release Notes
Contents
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Read This Section First
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What This Release Includes
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New And Revised Features
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Current Limitations
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Known Issues
Read This Section First
If you are new to Tomcat, you will want to consult the
Tomcat
Documentation included with this release. In addition, the Java Web
Services Developer Pack
tutorials include instructions
for deploying and running web services (and web applications) built with
these technologies in the included Tomcat server.
What This Release Includes
The JavaTM Web Services Developer Pack
includes the Tomcat servlet
and JSP container from the Apache Software
Foundation, according to the terms of the
Apache
Software License, Version 1.1. This document describes changes and
new features that have occurred since the most recent production release
(4.0.3) of Apache Tomcat.
New and Revised Features
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New Application Deployment Option - In previous versions of Tomcat,
developers could deploy a web service or web application by placing the
web application archive (WAR) file (or an unpacked directory conforming
to the organization of a WAR file) into the "webapps" directory. However,
if you wanted to customize the internal server configuration of this web
application, you needed to modify the server-wide "conf/server.xml" file.
Now, you have the additional choice to deploy an "application descriptor"
file in the "webapps" directory, instead of a WAR or application directory.
This file contains exactly the information you would put in the <Context>
element of "conf/server.xml", including the context path and the document
base. See the Tomcat Server Configuration Reference
for more information.
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Directories for Shared Classes - As described in the Tomcat Class
Loader HOW-TO, Tomcat provides a number of directories into which you
may place unpacked classes and JAR files that are visible to all web applications.
Please note that the directories for the Shared class loader have
changed from "classes" and "lib" to "shared/classes"
and "shared/lib", respectively.
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No web server connectors - The Java Web Services Developer Pack
does not ship with the web server connectors available with the Apache
download of Tomcat. It is designed to use Tomcat itself for serving all
static and dynamic content.
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Ant Custom Tasks - Tomcat now includes custom task definitions for
the Ant build tool, that make it easy to integrate installating,
reloading, and removing an application from a running instance of Tomcat
into your build.xml scripts. See the Manager
App HOW-TO documentation for more information.
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Administration Webapp - Tomcat now includes a new web application,
normally installed at http://localhost:8080/admin/,
which allows you to modify the operating properties of a running Tomcat
container. This application is not yet feature complete - see the Current
Limitations and Known Bugs sections below for more information. It is being
included now to get feedback on the usability of the current design.
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New "-silent" option to installer - If the user installs JWSDP with
the -silent option, Tomcat's jaxm-provider, admin, and manager webapps
will not be usuable. Also, any webapps or tools that depend on these webapps,
such as deploytool and JWSDP tutorials will not work. This situation is
due to the fact that no users will exist in the conf/tomcat-users.xml file
when the installer's -silent option is used. Users can enable the jaxm-provider,
admin, and manager webapps by adding a <user name="..." password="..." roles="...">
element to the <tomcat-users> tag in the conf/tomcat-users.xml
file. The "roles" attribute in this <user> element should be set to
"admin,manager,provider".
Current Limitations
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Running on privileged ports - This Release does not support running
Tomcat on privileged TCP/IP ports (those below 1024) without running under
a privileged account. This will be addressed in a future release.
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Maximum size of a JSP page - The JSP page compiler can generate
a Java class that exceeds the 64kb size limit on a single Java method that
is imposed by the JVM. A common way for this to occur is to include large
numbers (> 75) of custom tags in a single page. To work around this problem,
divide your large page into smaller pages, and use the <jsp:include>
standard action to combine them.
Known Issues
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Deprecated Entry Point Warning - When compiling JSP pages on a JDK
1.4 system, you will see the following warning message when your page includes
Java compilation errors: Note: sun.tools.javac.Main has been deprecated.
This is because the JSP page compiler currently uses a deprecated entry
point to the Java compiler. This warning can be ignored.
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IS08859_1 encoding not supported in web.xml - By default, xerces
does not support IS08859_1 encoding but crimson does. Any web.xml
that uses IS08859_1 encoding will be rejected by Tomcat using xerces.