Its been a while since Apache Tomcat 8 was released which has features that include:

  • Servlet 3.1
    • Non-blocking IO Support
    • Http Upgrade Support
  • EL 3.0
    • Streams & Filters
    • Lambdas
  • WebSocket 1.0

The list of new features can be found at:

http://www.itbuzzpress.com/tomcat/tomcat-8-configuration/what-s-new-in-tomcat-8.html

And the full changelog at:

https://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-8.0-doc/changelog.html

The latest version of Eclipse IDE “Mars” natively supports Tomcat 8 but if you are on a previous version of Eclipse (upto Eclipse Luna) the following steps will help you integrate Tomcat 8 to your Eclipse IDE:

1. Open Eclipse IDE, go to: Help → Install New Software → Work with: “http://download.eclipse.org/webtools/repository/luna ”.

2. Expand WST 3.6.0 → select “JST Server Adapters” and “JST Server Adapters Extensions”.

3. Wait for the dependencies to be resolved. Complete the installation and restart Eclipse in administrator mode to avoid the following error.publishing to tomcat v8.0 server at localhost has encountered a problem

4. Configure a new server in Eclipse which now shows “Apache Tomcat v8.0” in the list.