Feat 1.3.0 Adds License Check and Millisecond AOT Compilation for Java Microservices

Feat is a modern Java web‑service framework designed for cloud environments, aiming to set a new standard for high‑performance, low‑overhead enterprise applications. It combines Vert.x‑level asynchronous performance with Spring Boot‑like development convenience.

Key Features

Extreme performance powered by the mature smart-socket AIO framework, handling ten‑thousands of concurrent connections.

Full protocol support for HTTP/1.0, HTTP/1.1, HTTP/2.0, WebSocket and Server‑Sent Events.

Lightweight core ( feat-core) with minimal dependencies and very low memory usage, suitable for serverless and edge scenarios.

Cloud‑native development experience ( feat-cloud) offering annotation routing, dependency injection and auto‑configuration, enabling Spring Boot developers to start with zero learning cost.

AI integration ( feat-ai) with native support for Gitee AI Chat and Embedding models.

Release Highlights

1. Compile‑time License Verification

To help enterprises avoid compliance risks, Feat 1.3.0 adds a compile‑time license check that validates module licenses during the build phase.

# 编译期许可证验证示例输出
Feat License verification passed! License No: 20250910000001 Granted for: smartboot开源组织

If verification fails, the compilation aborts with an error:

################# ERROR ##############
invalid Feat License: 20250910000001_xxxxxx
######################################

2. AOT Code Extracted as Independent Module

The AOT‑related code is moved to a separate module feat-cloud-aot, which is only a compile‑time dependency and does not increase the runtime jar size.

<dependency>
    <groupId>tech.smartboot.feat</groupId>
    <artifactId>feat-cloud-starter</artifactId>
</dependency>
<!-- 编译期依赖，不会增加运行时包大小 -->
<dependency>
    <groupId>tech.smartboot.feat</groupId>
    <artifactId>feat-cloud-aot</artifactId>
    <scope>provided</scope>
</dependency>

This modularization reduces the final JAR size by 81 KB , lowering deployment and transfer costs.

AOT VM Innovation Improves Development Experience

Compilation efficiency breakthrough: local development compilation time drops from seconds to milliseconds, approaching traditional development speed.

Startup time trade‑off: startup latency rises to about 400 ms, but the gain in compilation speed is considered worthwhile.

Balanced development experience: achieves an optimal compromise between production performance and developer efficiency.

# AOT VM 模式启动提示
===================================================================
=  WARNING: Current application is running in AOT virtual mode   =
=  It is strongly incompatible with production environments.   =
=  Do not use in production!                                   =
===================================================================

Performance Comparison

Startup time measurements show remarkable advantages:

Feat Native starts in 8 ms .

Feat JVM version starts in 60 ms .

SpringBoot requires around 700 ms .

Memory consumption also favors Feat:

Feat Native runtime memory usage: 6 MB .

Feat JVM memory usage: 4‑65 MB range.

SpringBoot memory usage: 25‑144 MB range.

These figures demonstrate that Feat outperforms traditional SpringBoot in both startup speed and memory footprint, and remains competitive with Vert.x.

Future Outlook

Enhance multi‑environment configuration for more complex scenarios.

Optimize AOT compilation performance to further shorten compile time.

Extend the license verification mechanism to support additional authorization models.

Strengthen integration with mainstream development tools.