Blog
December 12, 2023
It’s been a big year for the Java community. Even though many people have been claiming for years that Java is dead, Java continues to be highly relevant within the software ecosystem. As Java has continued to be highly relevant, there were some notable changes made in 2023 namely the licensing changes. In 2019, Oracle removed security updates for Oracle JDK without support. In 2021, Oracle made all releases after JDK 17 free to use. And for 2023, Oracle added a requirement that if a company buys a license for one employee, they must purchase enough licenses for all employees. Only a few minor features were added in 2023, including sealed classes, record types and text block.
It’s also been a big year for JRebel. Read on for a recap of new features and integrations for JRebel, including a new VSCode extension and support for Java 21, and how those enhancements allow Java developers to save time by eliminating redeploys.
JRebel Releases to Meet Java Development Needs
Technologies throughout the community have followed suit with the updates to release cadence happening every single month. JRebel has been a part of this with our own monthly product releases (except January 2023). Each JRebel release prioritizes the strongest needs for the Java community.
IDE Integrations With JRebel
Throughout 2023, JRebel has made regular updates to the IntelliJ plugin, Eclipse plugin, and the VSCode extension, among other IDE improvements.
IntelliJ
IntelliJ has regular releases each month, and a large amount of Java developers make the regular IntelliJ updates to take advantage of the latest features. According to the 2023 Java Developer Productivity Survey, 42% of respondents are using IntelliJ as their primary IDE. For this reason, our team focuses on increasing what JRebel can support within IntelliJ.
Eclipse
Eclipse has a number of distributions supported by JRebel, including STS, myEclipse, and the standard Eclipse IDE. Each of these Eclipse distributions had a number of different releases throughout the year that JRebel has maintained.
VSCode
Microsoft Visual Studio Code, or VSCode, is a relatively new IDE that JRebel added support for last year. We were able to make some sizable updates, including adding support for VSCode for Cloud (VSCode Remote). This change made JRebel features in VSCode mirror those of other IDEs in the ability to work with remote changes while developing your application. This takes the benefit of JRebel a step beyond the typical joy of eliminating restarts and redeploys and adds the benefit of eliminating the time it takes to push changes to the cloud.
Application Server Support for JRebel
Most JRebel customers are running web applications, so we consider supporting application servers to be our specialty. The ability to compile changes and see that reflected immediately is greatly beneficial in this scenario. We have added support for a large number of different application servers and I will just cover a couple here.
Tomcat
Tomcat has become the main option for application servers throughout the Java ecosystem. Again, the 2023 JRebel Productivity Report found that 44% of respondents are using Tomcat to configure most of their frameworks. For that reason, JRebel has continued to maintain support for Tomcat adding many of the newest features within Tomcat.
Glassfish
Glassfish has been releasing monthly with mostly regular cadence. Glassfish 7.0.8 added support for JakartaEE 10, which is the new standard in Java community.
📚 Further reading: Jakarta EE Overview
Java Frameworks Support for JRebel
JRebel supports over 100 different frameworks. While this has definitely been a major benefit for a number of customers looking to use JRebel with confidence, the reality is that Spring has completely taken over the Java framework ecosystem.
From Spring MVC to Spring Boot, JRebel continues to support whatever version of Spring you might be working with, including SpringBoot 3 and Spring 6. That being said, we do continue to support a number of common Java frameworks like Hibernate, Struts, and Vaadin.
Final Thoughts
As we move into 2024, we look forward to continue to add amazing features into the JRebel product. You can expect JRebel to continue to support the latest Java technologies. On top of that, we will be working on new offerings, like JRebel for Cloud.
JRebel for Cloud is Here!
Discover how one JRebel license can save you time in local and remote Java development environments.
Monthly releases, from JRebel 2023 1.1 to 2023.4.2 have integrated support and new features for a variety of Java frameworkds and IDEs; catch up on all the details in the changelog. But the one thing that hasn’t changed in 2023 is how much Java development time you can save with JRebel by eliminating rebuilds and redeploys. See for yourself during your 14-day free trial.