News

Eclipse Jetty 11 Lays the Foundation for Cloud Native Java

• By John K. Waters
• March 24, 2021

The Eclipse Foundation announced the release of the Eclipse Jetty 11 this week. The newest version of the Java web server and servlet container is fully compatible with the Jakarta EE 9 Servlet specifications.

For the version 11 release, the Jetty development community followed the Eclipse Foundation's "Big Bang" approach, moving Jetty entirely into the jakarta.* namespace in a single effort.

"When you do something drastic like that, you can't help but wonder how the rest of the community is going to respond," Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation, told ADTmag. "Is this going to be a change that's seized upon as an opportunity, or are the vendors going to say, that's it, I'm out? Jetty supporting this is another strong indicator that the community and ecosystem are embracing the change."

Jetty is one of the world’s most widely deployed web server and servlet containers. Originally released in 1995, Jetty actually predates the official release of Java. It's a virtually ubiquitous open-source Java web server, which, Milinkovich said, "lays foundation for cloud native Java evolution."

"After a couple of years of blocking and tackling, we're seeing much of the ecosystem moving forward onto this new namespace," Milinkovich said. "Now we're looking forward, and what we're seeing is that the broader enterprise Java ecosystem is excited, and they're looking forward to what's happening here."

Jetty is extensively by millions of developers and in production environments around the world. Its small footprint, high performance, and scalability have made it an appealing choice among enterprise application developers using a variety of Java, Scala, Kotlin, and other JVM-based languages. Jetty is found in products and projects such as Apache Hadoop, Apache Maven, Google App Engine, Twitter's Streaming API, Zimbra, and the Eclipse IDE.

With Jetty 11, the javax.* packages now conform to the new jakarta.* namespace. Jakarta EE is a set of open specifications used for enterprise Java application development. It's a continuation of Java EE technology "that gathers the wide community of Java developers interested in advancing the specifications for future cloud native Java enterprise applications," the Foundation says. Each specification release includes its Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK).

"The Eclipse Jetty project has contributed to many of the specifications core to the Java experience and we're looking forward to doing so as a part of Jakarta EE," Jesse McConnell, CEO of Webtide, a company owned and operated by the developers of Jetty. "These efforts are the summation of hundreds of hours from as many developers and highlight the vibrant ecosystem in the Jakarta EE workspace. Combined with the Eclipse Foundation’s vendor- neutral governance, the end result is that the barriers to entry for companies interested in leveraging Jetty and Jakarta EE are dramatically lowered, thus providing an opportunity to shape the future of this hugely influential technology."
 
Jetty 11 is fully tested under the open-source licensed Jakarta EE 9 TCKs for the Servlet specifications. Jetty 11 is available for download here.