JRebel free alternatives

I'm a daily user of JRebel. JRebel allows you to program in Java like in PHP. It means that you don't need to restart your application to see your changes because JRebel perfoms hot code replace.

Even if it's a fantastic product, I wanted to see if I could integrate such a feature in an open source project I'm working on (tomcat-lsd). And I found these projects :

  • dcevm : http://ssw.jku.at/dcevm
  • FakeReplace : https://github.com/fakereplace
  • Apache common jci fam : http://commons.apache.org/jci/commons-jci-fam/index.html
  • Agent Smith : http://java.net/projects/agentsmith
Of course, JRebel is still more powerfull than these projects but I think they are two very good intiatives.

PS : after some other goolings, I found a blog dedicated to class reloading : http://classreloadingwebapp.blogspot.com/  . Many thanks to its author and his great post on jci.