Beginning with ModeShape 3.2, we now support installing ModeShape on top of an installation of JBoss EAP 6.1, and we no longer support installing on top of a JBoss AS7 installation. When we announced this change, there was some initial confusion about what this means for community users. Now that we’ve released 3.2.0.Final, I want to repeat that this is nothing but great news for all community users, including those already using JBoss AS7. Let’s look at why this is so.
If you have been following ModeShape for a while, you’ll probably remember that for well over a year we were building a kit that installed ModeShape as a subsystem into an AS7.1.1.Final installation, and that ModeShape then reused the Infinispan subsystem that was included in AS7 as well as all of the configuration and management tooling of AS7. Unfortunately, there were no subsequent releases of AS7.1, which meant that the Infinispan version remained unchanged despite the Infinispan community marching on with many more releases. Essentially, ModeShape was stuck on the same older Infinispan version that was included in AS7.1.1.Final.
Why is that? Well, the JBoss AS community project is focused on rapid development and evolution of features. Meanwhile, Red Hat takes certain community releases of AS and then spends a huge amount of time and effort to test, fix, improve, qualify it and then release it as JBoss EAP. Each EAP release is then supported for many years, making it a very stable platform to run in production.
However, things changed significantly in March 2013, when JBoss announced that it would start making available to the community all of the alpha, beta, and candidate releases for EAP, starting with JBoss EAP 6.1.0.Alpha1. This is a big deal because this makes the stable EAP releases (which are by definition more stable than the upstream community releases) available to the community!
Most ModeShape users want a stable platform in which they can run ModeShape and their services and application. And that’s EAP. So with ModeShape 3.2 we changed our kit to install into the EAP 6.1 platform. It was also a plus that the newer EAP 6.1 releases used some of the latest stable versions of Infinispan.
Now, one of the most-often asked questions centered around whether EAP 6.1.0.Alpha could be used for production. The FAQs make it clear that the answer is that, yes, EAP 6.1.0.Alpha1 (and any other released EAP Alphas) can be used without restriction (other than the LGPL). However, if you desire, you can easily upgrade to a free developer or paid production subscription to use later, even more stable releases.
This is a win-win for all involved. ModeShape gets a more up-to-date server platform while all our users get a far more stable server in which they can deploy their ModeShape-based applications and services!
So give ModeShape 3.2 a try.
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