Artemis Software Blog Summary

How to set up the Apache Portable Runtime for Tomcat - Confluence - JIRA

When I was looking through the Tomcat 6 logs I noticed this.

"catalina.2009-04-16.log:INFO: The APR based Apache Tomcat Native library which allows optimal performance in production environments was not found on the java.library.path: "

After a bit of Googling came across this:

"Apache Portable Runtime to provide superior scalability, performance" for Tomcat 6.

There are comments that when using the APR Tomcat will server static content on par with Apache (httpd) server speeds - though I haven't been able to personally verify this just yet.

So that is extremely compelling. I'm still searching for some statistics on how much good the APR does and may try to create my own.

Here are some instructions on building / installing the APR: http://apr.apache.org/
(I actually used this page which was a bit easier to follow: http://www.mbaworld.com/docs/apr.html)

Basically the steps which got it working for me were:

• download the APR source zip
• build the source as per the instructions listed on the page above - if you have the privleges this installs the package to /usr/local/apr
• Follow the steps here using
  After getting the APR to build/install as mentioned above this was the line the worked for me.
  ./configure --with-apr=/usr/local/apr --with-java-home=$JAVA_HOME && make && make install
• the final trick to get it working for me was to copy the libs from /usr/local/apr/lib to one of the directories listed in the 'java.library.path' above - which will be different for each machine but Tomcat thankfully tells you where it's looking.

That's more of a high level list rather than individual steps, but those can be found

You can tell it's installed when you see this line in your log files - most likely in logs/catalina.out
Loaded APR based Apache Tomcat Native library 1.1.14

In this case the environment is:
JDK 1.6
Tomcat 6.0.18
Confluence 2.10.3
Mac OS 10.5 and a Linux Cent OS server (the notes above would vary a bit for Windows)

Atlassian Summit around the corner!

If you're an Atlassian customer using JIRA, Confluence or one of their other great products be sure to consider attending Atlassian Summit.

After attending their 'Atlas Camp' developer conference last November in 2008 the small investment of time and traveling expense was easily justified. I immediately reaped a number of rewards through new relationships, networking and being able to ask very targeted technical questions of not only the expert developers but also of whom I consider to be some of the top developers in the world.

demo of very fast Confluence plugin compile - build - deploy

Here's a quick video I made showing just how fast it is to compile / build / deploy your Confluence plugin. It's hard to win converts.

Here are the real goods

JavaRebel speeds Confluence plugin development

Imagine for a moment that you're developing a Confluence plugin. Usually each change to your code requires at a minimum that you:

• uninstall the plugin
• run a maven build (which also reinstalls the plugin)
• if you're using a debugger probably struggle a bit to keep the instruction pointer on track

This is already an extremely efficient process for server development by any measure, but still takes a few manual steps and likely at least 20 to 30 seconds. That's not long, but after a few iterations is just enough time to where you might decide to glance at Digg, the BBC or see if the Chevy Volt is still on schedule and get distracted.

Now imagine there is virtually nothing to do and no delay for your Java changes to be picked up - approximately 1 second.

This is JavaRebel.

There is thorough information on the JavaRebel site in terms of the advantages and benefits it affords so I'll just briefly mention my personal experience.

The one thing I've always liked least about server side development are the delays to compile, redeploy and sometimes even minutes to restart a server. What JavaRebel has accomplished is really a Holy Grail of sorts in my mind.

I tried using JavaRebel for plugin devel upon its release in 2007. However at the time I could not get it to work with Confluence's plugin class loader. Last week I decided to give it another go and with help from their very responsive support and leveraging a new 'JavaRebel plugin framework' we now have it working with the Confluence plugin devel cycle.

Here is a demo video I made showing it used with a Confluence plugin
Here are the JavaRebel installation instructions specific to Confluence.

There are more polished videos of JavaRebel in use here.

One last question might be, "Is it worth the price?" (currently $49 or $149 or ....) I believe JavaRebel easily pays for itself in a couple hours of active coding in increased productivity not to mention a sense of empowerment and accomplishment when you start to fly through tasks in minutes that used to take hours. Personally I think Java development just got a lot more fun.

One last thing. I've not yet tried it with JIRA plugin development but the benefits will be even much more vast as JIRA does not as of yet support dynamic loading for plugins. Actually because of JavaRebel I plan to become much more active in JIRA development.

see ya Verizon - on track for the iPhone 3G

I got out of my Verizon account without paying the ~$175 early termination fee.

this was the link that helped me

It's pretty funny convincing someone that $0.15/month is a 'materially adverse affect', but one man's $0.15 cents is another man's treasure.

The Verizon supervisor said "we'll credit you the $0.15 cents that we raised the administrative fee."
I said, "thanks but no thanks, I'm going to go ahead and take advantage of Verizon's offer in the agreement."
"but it's only $0.15 cents"
I said, "Hey man it may only be $0.15 cents to you, but it's materially adverse to me. That's great if you're rolling in cash but I've gotta fill up my mini-van and if you haven't noticed gas prices aren't going down."

I might feel a tinge of guilt if their service in my area weren't so bad and drops calls all the time in Los Angeles no less.

At last no longer an iPhone 'have not' and the 3G in three weeks no less.