News

JRebel 6 Release Adds Javeleon Tech 2

• By John K. Waters
• November 10, 2014

Java toolmaker ZeroTurnaround has announced the general availability of the first major release of its flagship JRebel  Java Virtual Machine (JVM) plugin in two years.

This release comes with enhanced support for Java EE 7 and numerous bug fixes. But the big news in this release is its integration with technology from the company's acquisition of Javeleon.

Zeroturnaround acquired Javeleon, a provider of provider of dynamic update systems, last year. Javeleon was founded in 2012 to commercialize technology that resulted from research at the Maersk McKinney Moeller Institute at the University of Southern Denmark. The deal was the Estonia-based Zeroturnaround's first acquisition.

 Javeleon's two founders, Allan Gregersen and Michael Rasmussen, signed on to work on the JRebel and LiveRebel development teams. The LiveRebel release automation tool was discontinued  in August, but the JRebel plug-in, which integrates with the JVM and app servers on the class loader level to allow developers to make on-the-fly code changes in Java class files, is still going strong, the company says.

In fact, the integration of the Javeleon's technology will make the product even stronger, Zeroturnaround's CEO Jevgeni Kabanov told ADTmag, because it will enhance JRebel's ability to do what it already does. JRebel is a JVM plug-in designed to allow developers to make on-the-fly code changes in Java class files. They can reload individual changes to class structures, resources, and framework configurations without having to restart their applications. But JRebel lacked the ability to handle class hierarchy changes. The Javeleon tech adds this capability. ZeroTurnaround has said that it was on track to add this capability, and the Javeleon acquisition just gets it there faster.

"Javeleon did a few things that JRebel could not, and JRebel did a lot of things that Javeleon could not," Kabanov said in an email. "The new combined core provides our users with the best of both. Of course, not only did we integrate the Javeleon class reloading technology into JRebel, we have really improved user experience and usability in 6.0 as well. We have also added support for more of the latest and greatest, like Spring Boot and JBoss WildFly."

Along with WildFly, this release supports the latest versions of Oracle's WebLogic  and IBM's WebSphere. Support for the Spring Boot  rapid app development framework is also new in this release.

In June, ZeroTurnaround released an interactive Java profiler called XRebel (), designed to allow devs to find and fix problems as they code. The company also operates a research and content organization called Rebel Labs, which publishes free, vendor-neutral technical resources.

JRebel 6 can be downloaded here.