Apache Jakarta Commons: Reusable Java™ Components

Preface

I originally noticed the Jakarta Commons libraries while working with Apache Jakarta Tomcat. At some point, Tomcat started to include a suite of small libraries with commons in the name. They started to show up everywhere, in all sorts of other open source projects. At first, it was slightly off-putting—what exactly is commons-lang.jar, and why is this tiny library showing up in all of my software?

Exploring the Jakarta Commons, I first found a broad suite of what I would characterize as “utility” code—things that often wound up in my software in packages named things like “util.” Digging deeper, I found useful libraries to solve common problems, interesting algorithms, and more. In brief, by using the Jakarta Commons, I found I spent less ...