Question

Just installing Tomcat 6. There is an installation option named “native” that can be selected (description of this is “Install APR base Tomcat native.dll for better performance and scalability in production environments”).

Just wondering does it actaully make any difference if you don’t install it ??????

Is there any reason not to install it ???

Any help will be appreciated.

Cheers
Jeff

Answer 1

According to Tomcat, The Apache Portable Runtime (APR) is an optional component that can be installed with Tomcat, it improves stability and performance, especially when Tomcat is used to connect to a native Web server like Apache. The Apache Tomcat Native Library is a JNI (Java Native Interface) that provides many of Tomcat’s core functionality in native code instead of Java bytecode when installed natively.

So Unless you’re running a production server, don’t worry about this message. This is a library which is used to improve performance (on production systems).

Sometimes you will see the below message in the catalina log file in the log directory

INFO: The APR based Apache Tomcat Native library which allows optimal performance in production environments was not found on the java.........

It is because the APR library is missing at Tomcat startup time. Once installed you should see the below line in the catalina log file:

INFO: Loaded Apache Tomcat Native library <version>

However This option can be safely ignored for general purpose use and development