News

JRebel Update Supports WebSphere Liberty Profile

• By John K. Waters
• October 24, 2012

Java toolmaker ZeroTurnaround this week released an updated version of its JRebel JVM plug-in for IBM WebSphere (WAS) 8.5 that supports the Liberty profile. This is a tight integration between JRebel 5.1 and the app server, which the company says will streamline Java application development by eliminating the need to redeploy to see changes to class structures, resource files, and framework configuration files.

IBM's Liberty Profile is a lightweight WAS runtime for the cloud available on developerWorks. It enables the WAS server to provision only the features required by the application (or set of applications) deployed to the server. The JRebel plug-in is designed to integrate with the JVM and app servers on the class loader level, so it doesn't create new class loaders, but extends existing ones, allowing developers to make on-the-fly code changes in Java class files.

ZeroTurnaround's founder and CEO, Jevgeni Kabanov, calls the integration a "natural fit" for WAS and Liberty. JRebel product lead Anton Arhipov told ADTmag that the Liberty profile has been on the company's radar for about a year.

"This release is actually the culmination of a long integration road," he said. "It is mature now, and we think it complements Liberty with its productivity features so that redeploys can be avoided."

The Tartu, Estonia-based company announced the integration at the IBM WebSphere Technical Convention in Berlin, Germany. This release of the plugin also supports Remoting in the IntelliJ IDEA IDE, starting with version 11.1. JRebel 5.1 also comes with the first integration of Oracle's ATG Web Commerce Applications.

ZeroTurnaround is planning to support the upcoming version of Liberty, Arhipov said.

The JRebel plugin is available now for download. A 14-day free trial is available. The JRebel for Eclipse plugin is available on the Eclipse Marketplace.