Is Webbit deprecated by the Netty websockets support?

[Nahuel Greco]

I don't want to start any kind of flame war, but I'm new to Webbit and I think this point needs clarification. From what I saw, the Webbit project was started when Netty didn't had Websockets support, but later the Netty developers added it. So, what is Webbit now? An easy-to-use facade over Netty? It introduces some Websockets features not available currently in Netty? What is the roadmap for Webbit in the light of the current Netty Websockets support? What is the advantage of using Webbit over plain Netty today?

Saludos,
Nahuel Greco. 

[Joe Walnes]

Webbit has always been built on top of Netty's WebSocket support.

Webbit provides a simpler to use abstraction for building complete WebSocket enabled applications, without getting to hung up on the details. Netty provides a lot of the lower layer, Webbit provides a simple middle layer, and there are other higher level frameworks built on top of it.

The benefit of using Webbit over Netty is you can get started with a web-application very quickly without having to know too much about either Netty or Webbit.

The benefit of using Netty over Webbit is you get much closer to the IO layer and so have a lot more control and power.

Hope that clears it up.

-Joe

[aslak hellesoy]

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 4:29 PM, Joe Walnes <j...@walnes.com> wrote:
> Webbit has always been built on top of Netty's WebSocket support.
>

Yes and no. Webbit initially only supported the Hixie drafts of the
WebSocket protocol. Hixie was implemented in Netty when the Webbit
project was started, and Webbit used it.
Shortly after, Chrome implemented the more recent Hybi draft (which is
what the final RFC 6455 is based on). Since Netty didn't implement
this protocol, I implemented it in Webbit,
making Webbit able to speak both Hixie and Hybi websockets.

Later, the Netty team incorporated the Webbit Hybi code back into
Netty. The code has since undergone some refactorings, so it's hard to
recognise now.

Aslak