This article discusses the recent release of the JBoss EAP 8-Beta. We will describe some of the changes introduced by JBoss EAP 8 and demonstrate the steps required to migrate an application from JBoss EAP 7.4 to JBoss EAP 8-Beta.
JBoss EAP 8.0 will provide support for Jakarta EE 10. Jakarta EE 10 brings a huge change to Jakarta EE compared to the Jakarta EE 8 specifications supported by EAP 7. JBoss EAP 8 also introduces changes in the following areas:
- Removal of Picketbox: This has been deprecated since the release of JBoss EAP 6.4. Any legacy security configurations must be migrated to the Elytron security subsystem. EAP users who have already migrated to Elytron don't need to make any changes.
- Removal of PicketLink: This has been deprecated since the release of JBoss EAP 6.4. Leveraging RH SSO is recommended for the single sign-on functionality previously offered with PicketLink.
- Support for OpenID Connect (OIDC) will now be provided by the elytron-oidc-client subsystem instead of the separate RH-SSO OIDC adapter.
- SAML support is provided by the RH-SSO SAML adapter (Picketlink SAML has been removed). In JBoss EAP 8.0 GA, support for SAML will be provided by a new RH-SSO SAML Galleon Feature Pack.
- Hibernate 6.x: Read the Hibernate Search article for guidance on migrating from 5.11.x to 6.0.x.
- Removal of JDK 8: JDK 11 or JDK 17 is now required.
- Jolokia and Prometheus removed: Red Hat will no longer support these features. JBoss EAP server exposes metrics through the server metrics endpoint: <server address>:<management port>/metrics.
- Apache Log4j version 1 APIs removed: If your applications do not package log4j.jar and Log4j configuration as part of the application, then you must update them.
- New maven plugin: The new eap-maven-plugin uses Galleon technology to build the server based on the layer configuration needed in your application. This results in a reduced size and memory footprint, plus a reduced attack surface. If the JAR impacted by a CVE is not present, EAP will not be vulnerable to the CVE. The JBoss EAP 8 OpenShift images don’t contain EAP runtime binaries like it used to in EAP 6 and EAP 7. This plugin also supports the execution of JBoss EAP CLI script files to customize your server configuration. OpenShift Source to Image builds (S2I) incorporate this change and have been redesigned to leverage the eap-maven-plugin to create the server. You can find more information in the documentation.
- Bridge deploy fail: Previously, if a bridge were misconfigured, you wouldn’t know until you tried to use it. Now, the bridge will fail when added if it fails to deploy.
Refer to the release notes for more information about the changes introduced in this beta release.
Migrating from JBoss EAP 7.4 to JBoss EAP 8-Beta
Moving applications from JBoss EAP 7.4 to JBoss EAP 8.0 Beta will require code changes (due to the move from Jakarta EE 8 to Jakarta EE 10 (e.g., converting from the “javax” namespace to “jakarta” namespace). These changes are documented in this article. To help our customers with this migration effort, engineers at Red Hat have been busy updating our tools: the Migration Toolkit for Applications, including the Migration Toolkit for Runtimes (MTR, for non-OpenShift projects) and the JBoss EAP Server Migration tool. In this article, we will use these tools to help migrate an application from JBoss EAP 7.4 to JBoss EAP 8-Beta.
We will focus on two areas: the code changes required, identified by the latest version of the MTR tool, and the configuration changes to our standalone.xml file.
We will use an application based on the JBoss EAP 7.4 quickstarts with some modifications to connect to a MySQL database. This will allow us to validate the conversion of modules and drivers. You can refer to the source code for this application.
Prerequisites
Before starting, we will set up an instance of JBoss EAP 7.4 with a running application. This will help demonstrate the server configuration migration process.
We will use the JBoss EAP 7.4 quickstarts kitchensink application with some modifications as follows:
- The application has been updated to connect to a MySQL database. This will allow us to test the migration of J2EE modules and drivers.
- Java Server Faces has been updated from version 2.2 to 2.3, as described in the KCS article.
We can use Podman or Docker to run an instance of MySQL with the correct configuration with the following command:
podman run -d -p 3306:3306 -e MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD=root -e MYSQL_DATABASE=eap mysql
Download the JBoss EAP 7.4 zip distribution. Extract the distribution into a local folder (e.g., ~/jboss-eap-74). If you don’t already have a Red Hat account, you need to create one before you can log in to download this archive.
Set the EAP_HOME environment variable.
export EAP_HOME=~/jboss-eap-74
Now we can start JBoss EAP 7.4 with the following command:
$EAP_HOME/bin/standalone.sh
Check out this example application.
Change the directory into the eap-quickstarts/kitchensink folder.
Copy the contents of the modules folder to the ~/jboss-eap-74/modules folder.
cp -r modules/* $EAP_HOME/modules
Run the JBoss EAP CLI:
$EAP_HOME/bin/jboss-cli.sh –-connect
From the JBoss CLI, enter the following commands to configure the MySQL driver and data source:
/subsystem=datasources/jdbc-driver=mysql:add(driver-name=mysql,driver-module-name=com.mysql)
data-source add --name=mysql --jndi-name=java:/jdbc/mysql --driver-name=mysql --connection-url=jdbc:mysql://127.0.0.1:3306/eap --user-name=root --password=root
Build and deploy the application to JBoss EAP 7.4 with maven:
mvn clean install wildfly:deploy
Once this application is deployed successfully, we should be able to access it here: http://127.0.0.1:8080/kitchensink.
We now have a running instance of our application running in JBoss EAP 7.4 ready to migrate to JBoss EAP 8.0 Beta. Before starting the migration, shut down the JBoss EAP 7.4 server and create an environment variable pointing to the JBoss EAP 7.4 deployment.
export EAP_PREVIOUS_HOME=~/jboss-eap-74
Download the JBoss EAP 8-Beta distribution here.
Extract the distribution into a local folder (e.g., ~/jboss-eap-8).
Set the EAP_HOME environment variable as follows:
export EAP_HOME=~/jboss-eap-8
Now we can move on to the migration from JBoss EAP 7.4 to JBoss EAP 8.0 Beta.
Server configuration changes
When we deployed our application to JBoss EAP 7.4, we made some changes to the server configuration to add a module and driver to connect to MySQL. We must ensure these modules and drivers are in place and working correctly in our JBoss EAP 8-Beta server. We can use the JBoss EAP server migration tool to perform this migration for us.
Download the server migration tool from this link.
Extract the archive to a local folder and change into the new directory. Run the following command:
./jboss-server-migration.sh -s $EAP_PREVIOUS_HOME -t $EAP_HOME
The server migration tool will ask a series of questions during the migration process:
---------------------------------------------------------- ---- JBoss Server Migration Tool ----------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Retrieving servers... INFO SOURCE server name: JBoss EAP, version: 7.4.0.GA. INFO TARGET server name: JBoss EAP, version: 8.0.0.Beta. ---------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------- Server migration starting... INFO --- Migrating modules requested by environment... INFO No modules to migrate. Migrate the source's standalone server? yes/no?
Choose yes to migrate the standalone configuration.
INFO --- Migrating standalone server... INFO Source's standalone content migrated. INFO Source's standalone configurations found: [standalone-full-ha.xml, standalone-full.xml, standalone-ha.xml, standalone-load-balancer.xml, standalone.xml] Migrate all configurations? yes/no?
Choose no. We want to select the configurations to migrate.
Migrate configuration standalone-full-ha.xml ? yes/no?
Choose no. We don’t want to migrate standalone-full-ha.xml.
Migrate configuration standalone-full.xml ? yes/no?
Choose no. We don’t want to migrate standalone-full.xml
Migrate configuration standalone-ha.xml ? yes/no?
Choose no. We don’t want to migrate standalone-ha.xml.
Migrate configuration standalone-load-balancer.xml ? yes/no?
Choose no. We don’t want to migrate standalone-load-balancer.xml.
Migrate configuration standalone.xml ? yes/no?
Choose yes. We want to migrate standalone.xml.
INFO Migrating standalone configuration standalone.xml... WARN Migration of legacy security domain jboss-web-policy's authorization is not supported and will be ignored. WARN Migration of legacy security domain jaspitest's authentication-jaspi is not supported and will be ignored. WARN Migration of legacy security domain jboss-ejb-policy's authorization is not supported and will be ignored. INFO Legacy security XML configuration retrieved. INFO Unsupported extensions removed: [org.jboss.as.security] INFO Unsupported subsystems removed: [urn:jboss:domain:security:2.0] INFO Referenced paths migrated. INFO Legacy security realms removed from XML configuration. WARNING: An illegal reflective access operation has occurred WARNING: Illegal reflective access by org.wildfly.extension.elytron.SSLDefinitions (jar:file:/home/philip/Downloads/wildfly-ee-dist-8.0.0.Beta-redhat-00002/jboss-eap-8.0/modules/system/layers/base/org/wildfly/extension/elytron/main/wildfly-elytron-integration-jakarta-19.0.0.Beta16-redhat-00004.jar!/) to method com.sun.net.ssl.internal.ssl.Provider.isFIPS() WARNING: Please consider reporting this to the maintainers of org.wildfly.extension.elytron.SSLDefinitions WARNING: Use --illegal-access=warn to enable warnings of further illegal reflective access operations WARNING: All illegal access operations will be denied in a future release INFO Legacy security realm ManagementRealm migrated to Elytron. INFO Legacy security realm ApplicationRealm migrated to Elytron. INFO Legacy security domain other migrated to Elytron. Migrate the source's managed domain? yes/no?
Choose no. We are not using a managed domain.
Server migration done. INFO ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Task Summary ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- server .......................................................................................... SUCCESS standalone ..................................................................................... SUCCESS contents.standalone.migrate-content-dir ....................................................... SUCCESS contents.standalone.migrate-content(path=7d/975dfd92d3b7a35f48054ad2190bdf7ebbeb3b/content) .. SUCCESS contents.standalone.migrate-content(path=b5/fe70630a477a851f755cc04eb5cc3030bb02db/content) .. SUCCESS contents.standalone.migrate-content(path=92/2cdbb0d087989ad5e6ecbd3c0123a34def19b7/content) .. SUCCESS contents.standalone.migrate-content(path=14/99d19995fc5835cb1c07eed113447b4fb46c4e/content) .. SUCCESS contents.standalone.migrate-content(path=3d/25c8107fcc4cf82f234dcf6ad5b8e926e7ec18/content) .. SUCCESS contents.standalone.migrate-content(path=45/9834b7318bd81b320829432fdef5a77bf93a19/content) .. SUCCESS contents.standalone.migrate-content(path=38/c53e35a6ab9d8a40016a5429f7115ff94e3ce7/content) .. SUCCESS standalone-configurations ..................................................................... SUCCESS standalone-configuration(source=standalone.xml) .............................................. SUCCESS ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Migration Result: SUCCESS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once this operation completes, we can start our JBoss EAP 8.0 server with the following command from the JBoss EAP installation folder:
./bin/standalone.sh
When the server has started successfully, we can test our configuration with the following commands:
./jboss-cli.sh --connect
/subsystem=datasources:installed-drivers-list
The output should show the MySQL driver as follows:
{ "outcome" => "success", "result" => [ { "driver-name" => "mysql", "deployment-name" => undefined, "driver-module-name" => "com.mysql", "module-slot" => "main", "driver-datasource-class-name" => "", "driver-xa-datasource-class-name" => "", "datasource-class-info" => undefined, "driver-class-name" => "com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver", "driver-major-version" => 8, "driver-minor-version" => 0, "jdbc-compliant" => false }
We can also test our datasource connection with the following JBoss CLI command:
/subsystem=datasources/data-source=mysql:test-connection-in-pool
A successful connection should result in the following response:
{ "outcome" => "success", "result" => [true] }
We can now be confident our application will have the required drivers and data sources present, so we can move on to the code analysis section.
Code analysis
To perform code analysis of our JBoss EAP 7.4 application, we will use the latest version of the Migration Toolkit for Runtimes. We can download this tool from here.
We launch the MTR tool with the following command: ./run_windup.sh, then navigate to: http://127.0.0.1:8080/windup-ui.
From the MTR landing page (Figure 1), click on Create Project.
Enter a project name (e.g., eap7-eap8) and click on Next.
Then, we need to upload an artifact to analyze (Figure 2).
We locate a build of our application in the form of a WAR file and upload it via the web console. The WAR file will be in the eap-quickstarts/kitchensink/target folder.
Click on Next to progress to the next stage.
Now select the transformation target (Figure 3): select “eap8” from the “Application server migration to EAP 7” box.
Click Next to continue.
From the next screen, add org to the list of selected packages and click on Next.
Click through the pages that follow and then select Save and Run to start the analysis. When the analysis finishes, click on the graph symbol on the right of the analysis list row to load the report.
You will see from the report the tool is estimating 87 story points to migrate this application. The estimation of story points does not relate to time (e.g., hours or days). It’s more of an indication to measure against reports from other analyses. Click on kitchensink.war to view the details of the issues to be addressed (Figure 4).
From the dashboard view, click on the Issues tab to view the list of incidents to resolve.
For this article, we will focus on the Migration Mandatory items (Figure 5).
The results from this analysis are in line with our expectations (i.e., changing “javax” references to “jakarta”). Some other changes are also highlighted (e.g., our application uses Java Server Faces). So we need to update the version to match the JBoss EAP 8-Beta version.
We can choose to either go through these items individually and make the code changes manually or use a tool like Openrewrite to automate these changes. For guidance on using Openrewrite to migrate from Java EE 8 to Jakarta EE 9, refer to this article.
One of the changes listed on the report is to update a dependency in the pom.xml file illustrated in Figure 6:
In our example, in addition to changing the groupId and artifactId, we will need to change the version.server.bom property. In the pom.xml replace the following:
<version.server.bom>7.4.0.GA</version.server.bom>
with:
<version.server.bom>8.0.0.Beta-redhat-00004</version.server.bom>
NOTE: Because this guide relates to a beta release of JBoss EAP, we need to add the early access maven repositories to our project. This will not be required for the GA release, therefore is not covered by the migration toolkit rules. To add these repositories, add the following to the repositories block in the pom.xml file.
<repository>
<id>redhat-ea-maven-repository</id>
<name>Red Hat Early Access Maven Repository</name>
<url>https://maven.repository.redhat.com/earlyaccess/all/</url>
<releases>
<enabled>true</enabled>
<updatePolicy>never</updatePolicy>
</releases>
<snapshots>
<enabled>true</enabled>
<updatePolicy>never</updatePolicy>
</snapshots>
<layout>default</layout>
</repository>
Once all these changes have been made, we should be able to build and deploy our application to JBoss EAP 8-Beta. To do this, with our JBoss EAP 8-Beta server running, run the following command:
mvn clean install wildfly:deploy
Once the maven process completes, our application should be available at http://127.0.0.1:8080/kitchensink.
Success! Our JBoss EAP 7.4 application and server configuration are now fully migrated to JBoss EAP 8-Beta.
JBoss EAP 8-Beta release
In this article, we described the key changes introduced with the beta release of JBoss EAP 8.0. We used the server migration tool to perform the changes necessary to move the configuration from JBoss EAP 7.4.0 to JBoss EAP 8.0. We used the Migration Toolkit for Applications to provide guidance on the code changes required to move from Jakarta EE 8 to Jakarta EE 10.
Here is a list of some useful links relating to the JBoss EAP Beta release:
Last updated: November 9, 2023