JBoss community version corresponding to EAP version

Question

As far as i know the EAP editions of JBoss are just a bunch of community edition JBoss projects with some sugar.

So, what is the community edition of the JBoss application server that JBoss EAP 4.3.0 corresponds to?

Answer 1

This response is really late but I came across the unanswered question in a Google search and I wanted to make sure there's a correct response. I work for JBoss support so you can consider this a qualified answer.

JBoss EAP is the only commercially supported version of JBoss. It contains JBoss AS and JBoss Seam. EAP diverged (in terms of the svn branch it's built off) from JBoss AS around version 4.2.1 (not exactly, but close enough). EAP has a 5-year lifetime and is tested and certified rigorously. EAP has paid commercial support and patches (called CPs or cumulative patches) that are designed to maintain ABI/API stability over time while allowing for security issues and bugs to be fixed. It is actually against policy to introduce a feature in a CP, but it happens on occasion.

If you're familiar with how Red Hat Enterprise Linux differs from Fedora, you can consider the difference to be quite similar. The JBoss project/product split is much newer, though, so the differences are smaller. Here's the official page describing what I've said.

http://www.jboss.com/products/community-enterprise

Cheers,

Chris

Answer 2

I've been digging into JBoss version information to try and find an answer to a more specific question i'm dealing with, and i thought i'd share my observations. You can get a picture of the names and dates of releases from JBoss's JIRA bug tracker: you can check out the info for the Community[1] and Enterprise[2] editions.

I was interested in the 4.2 branch rather than 4.3. If you hunt back a few years, you'll find that the Community release 4.2.0.GA[3] came out on the 14th of May 2007, and was followed six weeks later by the Enterprise release 4.2.0.GA[4] on the 3rd of July 2007. After that, the numbering diverged: the Community edition shipped point upgrades - 4.2.1.GA[5], 4.2.2.GA[6] and 4.2.3.GA[7] - every few months after that. The Enterprise edition instead shipped a series of 'cumulated patch' releases based on 4.2.0, starting with 4.2.0.GA_CP01[8] and hitting 4.2.0.GA_CP06[9] a few months ago. How do these releases relate to each other? I'm still not sure about this, but i think the theory is that the Enterprise edition doesn't gain any new features (within that branch), only bugfixes, but that those bugfixes are applied to both the Enterprise and Community editions. In fact, i suspect that in the case of my bug[10], the fix was developed against the Community edition, and then crossported to the Enterprise edition, although i'm far from sure about that.

Turning back to your actual question, things are less clear. The Enterprise 4.3.0.GA[11] came out on the 7th of January 2008, after the Community 4.2.2.GA[12], but before 4.2.3.GA[13]. There is no Community 4.3.0, nor is there an Enterprise 4.2.x for any x > 0. Chris says that the Enterprise and Community versions "diverged", and i assume that what he means by that is that the Enterprise version is no longer based on just bugfixing a Community version, but rather is now an entirely separate development stream - presumably taking code drops from the Community edition where that's appropriate.

So, the answer to your question is some combination of: 4.2.2.GA (but only distantly), 4.2.0.GA (plus years of separate development), and mu.

PS: As a new user, i apparently only get one hyperlink per comment, so most of the juicy details have to be good old fashioned footnotes:

• [1] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS
• [2] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBPAPP
• [3] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS/fixforversion/12311408
• [4] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBPAPP/fixforversion/12311205
• [5] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS/fixforversion/12311049
• [6] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS/fixforversion/12311522
• [7] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS/fixforversion/12311686
• [8] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBPAPP/fixforversion/12311447
• [9] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBPAPP/fixforversion/12312660
• [10] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBPAPP-366
• [11] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBPAPP/fixforversion/12311517
• [12] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS/fixforversion/12311522
• [13] https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/JBAS/fixforversion/12311686

Answer 3

The primary difference between EAP and the community release is that EAP is the officially supported configuration of the community edition, with fixed versions of the various components. RedHat was finding it too difficult to support the different component versions used by man+dog, and nailed it down to one set.

As for versioning, the EAP version numbers roughly track the community releases, but with differences:

• EAP 4.2 is based on JBossAS 4.2
• EAP 4.3 is also based on JBossAS 4.2.1, but with JBossMQ replaced by JBossMessaging, and Java6 support
• EAP 5.0 is based on JBossAS 5.1

Answer 4

According to JBoss's application components page, JBoss EAP 4.3 is based on:

JBoss Application Server 4.2.1 with various updates, component upgrades, and bug fixes

This is the complete official answer by JBoss