JRebel, also known in the past as java-rebel, is a class reloading tool, that will automatically reload your classes when you change anything in it. And with anything, I mean anything (well almost anything, but the exceptions will follow shortly).
Normal hot-swapping containers can also reload classes in some occasions, but those occasions are limited to the content of existing methods (and for a number of times. After a couple of times of reloading classes in tomcat, you might or might not start to see different results then you are expecting). JRebel however can reload many more situations, for instance when methods are added or removed, or when the signature of the method is changed. In all of these situations JRebel can reload your classes without requiring a restart of the container. And that is a huge time safer.
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