Java tools company ZeroTurnaround has announced its JRebel 4.0 Java Virtual Machine plugin. Attempting to coin the phrase "redeploy-eliminating", the company says this plugin allows developers to see changes they make to their apps instantly, without redeploying.
According to ZeroTurnaround's own survey of over 1100 Java developers, redeploying claims an average of 10.5 minutes of every coding hour, for most developers.
"With this latest JRebel release, we've broadened our attack campaign against redeploys, the natural enemy of Java developers worldwide," remarked ZeroTurnaround's CEO, David Booth.
"When Java developers want to see the effects of new code (or make changes to existing code), they have to redeploy their entire application — even to see the smallest changes. We'd like to enable Java developers to start up their container when they start working, and know that's the last time they'll have to do it all day — with JRebel 4.0, we're 95% of the way there," explained Booth.
ZeroTurnaround's ambition (or marketing spin if you prefer the truth) is a future where Java development can be as fast and iterative as other programming languages, like Ruby or Python.
The company estimates that is has already prevented over 33 million redeploys for 11,000+ Java developers worldwide, but again, this appears to be a best-case-scenario marketing-driven calculation based on number of users multiplied by ZeroTurnaround's own gauge of its product's worth.
More solid facts include the fact that JRebel 4.0 adds features such as integration with HotSwap, new EJB support for more versions of JBoss, Weblogic, Websphere, and Glassfish, support for anonymous class renaming, and a dozen new integrations with various technologies.
This latest version of JRebel arrives just two weeks after the debut of LiveRebel, a new tool intended to update live production apps across an entire cluster with no downtime. JRebel and LiveRebel have annual subscription fees, but there are free licenses available for Open Source and Scala projects.
