Monday, April 08, 2013

Apache Struts 1 End-of-Life (EOL) Announced


The Apache Software Foundation announced on Friday (05Apr2013) that the Struts 1.x web framework will no longer be officially supported.  It has reached End-of-Life (EOL) status.  I saw this announcement originally in this InfoQ article, “Struts 1 Reaches End of Life”.

Started in 2000 to create an improved development experience over pure Java Server Pages (JSP) utilization, Struts 1 soon became the de-facto standard for Java-based web application development. Numerous companies adopted Struts 1 as a strategic platform and stayed with it even after JSF was introduced as a standardized Java EE framework for web application development. In the early 2000s, most job offerings in the space of Java-based web technology came with Struts 1 as a must-have skill. Even nowadays many important web sites and web based user interfaces rely on Struts 1 technology. It is furthermore remarkable that many later introduced web frameworks such as Spring MVC or WebWork were crucially inspired by Struts 1.

Struts 1 was cutting edge Java technology back in 2000 when it was originally released.  It paved the way for MVC frameworks and made J2EE development bearable.  I am glad to see the Struts team officially focusing on Struts 2 and beyond as they have been doing in the past few eyars.  As stated in the Apache announcement, Struts 1 has not been updated since December 2008 so this EOL announcement was inevitable.

No comments: