Class loaders are at the core of the Java language. Java EE containers, OSGi, NetBeans modules, Tapestry 5, Grails and many others use class loaders heavily. Yet when something goes wrong, would you know how to solve it?
In this session we’ll take a tour of the Java class loading mechanism, both from JVM and developer point of view. We will look at typical problems that you get with class loading and how to solve them. ClassNoDefError, IncompatibleClassChangeError, LinkageError and many others are symptoms of specific things going wrong that you can usually find and fix. For each problem we’ll go through a hands on demo with a corresponding solution.
We’ll also take a look at how and why classloaders leak and how can you remedy that.
Dr Jevgeni Kabanov is the founder and CEO of ZeroTurnaround, a development tools company that focuses on productivity. He wrote the first version of the ZeroTurnaround flagship product, JRebel, a class-reloading JVM plugin. Jevgeni has been speaking at international conferences since 2005, including Devoxx, JavaZone, JAOO, QCon, TSSJS, JFokus and JavaOne, where he was named Rock Star in 2011 and 2012. Jevgeni also started the first Java conference in Estonia, Geekout. He has done research in programming languages, types and virtual machines, publishing several papers on topics ranging from category theoretical notions to typesafe Java DSLs.
