FAQS

This FAQ was originally on wocommunity.org. It was moved to the wiki to allow members of the community to augment it.

I heard that Apple deprecated WebObjects, is this true?

Short answer: NO!

Long answer: Only the development tools that had been developed by Apple are deprecated. These have been replaced by the much better Eclipse plugin called WOLips. The WebObjects runtime itself is far from being deprecated. In fact, Apple is working hard on upgrading the WebObjects frameworks so that they become the best tools for the Web 2.0 world. The past few years have seen several updates to WebObjects (the latest being WebObjects 5.4.3). Work continues to be done and it looks like this will be another exciting year, so we hope to see you at WOWODC 2010!

As an aside, some may wonder why Apple chose to deprecate their WebObjects tool set? The primary reason is because the old tools were based on the ObjectiveC version of EOF which in turn was based on the Cocoa-Java bridge which was eliminated in Leopard. Not coincidentally the WOLips toolset became much much better with part of its development being funded by an internal group at Apple that uses WebObjects.

When is Apple going to open-source WebObjects?

At this time Apple has stated that they have no plans to release the WebObjects frameworks as open-source. However, even if the core WebObjects frameworks are not open-source, most of the community (more than 90% at last count) relies on third party frameworks like Project Wonder (which rapidly evolves to fix bugs and enhance functionality of the WebObjects core) and development tools like WOLips which are.

I installed Xcode 3.x and can't find any WebObjects tools or templates, what am I suppose to do now?

Starting with the release of Xcode 2.4 on Tiger, Apple announced that they were deprecating the WebObjects tools (EOModeler, WebObjects Builder and RuleEditor). With the release of Xcode 3.0, the WebObjects tools and project templates were no longer included with the Developer Tools installation. You can build existing WebObjects projects with Xcode 3.x on Leopard, but it is no longer possible to create new ones. So if you want to have a complete IDE (and a much better WebObjects and Java developer experience) we recommend you move to WOLips.

OK, I guess I have to move to WOLips, what is that all about?

WOLips is a community developed, open-source project that provides replacements for all of the deprecated WebObjects tools. WOLips is based on Eclipse, an open-source, cross platform, and extensible Java IDE that many feel offers a much better Java development experience than Xcode ever did. There are plenty of additional plugins for Eclipse that can be used to improve your code and make you more productive. Also, because Eclipse is cross-platform, WebObjects developers on Windows are no longer saddled with obsolete and second class development tools.

How do I install the WebObjects frameworks?

A standalone WebObjects 5.4.3 installer is available directly from Apple. Alternately you can use the WOInstaller.jar installation tool to automate the process as documented on this page of the WebObjects wiki.

Can you explain the license?

The WebObjects license allow you to :

• Deployment: Freely deploy your applications on any kind of server that have a JRE, either in a WebObjects-way of deployment (Monitor and wotaskd) or in a servlet container.

• Development: Develop on Apple hardware. The choice of OS is yours.

We do understand that many organizations can't deploy on Mac OS X Server, but for development, do yourself a flavor and use Apple computers. Really you should... And since you can run Windows, Linux and Solaris in virtual machines on any Macs released since mid-2006, you have no reason of not using Mac OS X as your WebObjects development platform.

Where is WebObjects' public roadmap?

Apple never release public roadmaps for their technologies, but you can buy a developer package (ADC Select or ADC Premier), which will give you access to developer previews of Apple technologies.

I want to contact the WebObjects team at Apple

Use Radar to submit either a bug or submit a request about WebObjects.