Apache Portable Runtime (APR) based Native library for Tomcat
Table of Contents
Introduction
Tomcat can use the Apache Portable Runtime to provide an OpenSSL based TLS implementation for the HTTP connectors.
These features allows making Tomcat a general purpose webserver, will enable much better integration with other native web technologies, and overall make Java much more viable as a full fledged webserver platform rather than simply a backend focused technology.
Installation
APR support requires three main native components to be installed:
- APR library
- JNI wrappers for APR used by Tomcat (libtcnative)
- OpenSSL libraries
Windows
Windows binaries are provided for tcnative-1, which is a statically compiled .dll which includes OpenSSL and APR. It can be downloaded from here as 32bit or AMD x86-64 binaries. In security conscious production environments, it is recommended to use separate shared dlls for OpenSSL, APR, and libtcnative-1, and update them as needed according to security bulletins. Windows OpenSSL binaries are linked from the Official OpenSSL website (see related/binaries).
Linux
Most Linux distributions will ship packages for APR and OpenSSL. The JNI wrapper (libtcnative) will then have to be compiled. It depends on APR, OpenSSL, and the Java headers.
Requirements:
- APR 1.2+ development headers (libapr1-dev package)
- OpenSSL 1.0.2+ development headers (libssl-dev package)
- JNI headers from Java compatible JDK 1.4+
- GNU development environment (gcc, make)
The wrapper library sources are located in the Tomcat binary bundle, in the
bin/tomcat-native.tar.gz archive.
Once the build environment is installed and the source archive is extracted, the wrapper library
can be compiled using (from the folder containing the configure script):
./configure && make && make installAPR Components
Once the libraries are properly installed and available to Java (if loading fails, the library path will be displayed), the Tomcat connectors will automatically use APR.