Download Apache Tomcat 8.0.0-RC1

Apache Tomcat is a Web container developed by the Apache Software Foundation. Tomcat runs Java Servlets and JavaServer Pages and provides an http web environment on which Java code can be run directly. For more information, please refer to this page. The developers released the first release candidate of version 8.0.0 a few days ago, which is currently offered under the alpha flag. This version ships with the following notes:

Tomcat 8.0.0-RC1 (alpha) Released

The Apache Tomcat Project is proud to announce the first release candidate for Apache Tomcat 8 – 8.0.0-RC1 (alpha). Tomcat 8 is aligned with Java EE 7. In addition to supporting updated versions of the Java EE specifications, Tomcat 8 includes a number of improvements compared to Tomcat 7. The notable changes include:

• Support for Java Servlet 3.1, JavaServer Pages 2.3, Java Unified Expression Language 3.0 and Java WebSocket 1.0.
• The default connector implementation is now the Java non-blocking implementation (NIO) for both HTTP and AJP.
• A new resources implementation that replaces Aliases, VirtualLoader, VirtualDirContext, JAR resources and external repositories with a single, consistent approach for configuring additional web application resources. The new resources implementation can also be used to implement overlays (using a master WAR as the basis for multiple web applications that each have their own customizations).

Full details of these changes, and all the other changes, are available in the Tomcat 8 changelog.

The purpose of this release candidate is to give users an opportunity to test Tomcat 8 and provide feedback to the Tomcat community. It has been given an alpha status which means that it is not judged as being ready for production usage. The implementations of the 4 Java EE 7 specifications are all complete but there is some internal refactoring to be completed before the alpha label is removed.