End-to-end testing Java web applications with an embedded Tomcat

In this instalment on assembly testing [1] I'll talk about how automated system tests run over my Java web applications. The set-up is rather cheap, not very labour-intensive and can incrementally evolve from a simple assembly test (aka smoke test) to a full-fledged system test. Since this post is rather concrete naming tools and frameworks, … Continue reading End-to-end testing Java web applications with an embedded Tomcat →

Tomcat starts slowly in docker container

Just a little reminder to self: when running Tomcat with Java 8 in an Ubuntu Docker container, Tomcat will take a very long time (minutes!) to start with even the simplest web application. The issue is actually documented (not entirely Docker-related). The solution is to modify JAVA_OPTS to use a different random device: JAVA_OPTS=-Djava.security.egd=file:/dev/urandom

Tomcat/Scala: invalid byte tag in constant pool: 110

When deploying a Scala application on Tomcat 7 I got this weird error: invalid byte tag in constant pool: 110 from Tomcat's annotation scanning in the scala utils jar. There is this bug report that claims it's fixed, but it seems to still happen wit 7.0.53. Since the application doesn't rely on Tomcat's annotation scanning, … Continue reading Tomcat/Scala: invalid byte tag in constant pool: 110 →

Tomcat, Spring and memory leaks when undeploying or redeploying an web application

In this post I'll talk about a new kind of memory leak in Spring applications involving transaction management and initializing beans. About memory leaks when undeploying a web application While developing a web application with Spring and Tomcat I frequently run out of heap space. The web is full of stories about this. There is … Continue reading Tomcat, Spring and memory leaks when undeploying or redeploying an web application →

Tomcat, Eclipse, Spring and reloading

As a webapp gets bigger the time it takes to boot also increases which is a serious factor contributing to decreased focus and productivity when programming. When running Tomcat with Eclipse, the web application may restart even for the most trivial changes incurring long pauses. I found the following settings for Tomcat to minimize restarts … Continue reading Tomcat, Eclipse, Spring and reloading →