How can I upgrade Headwind MDM to use the latest versions of Spring Boot, Tomcat, and other backend dependencies?

Question

I'm currently running the default server-side setup provided by Headwind MDM, but I'd like to upgrade it to use the latest stable versions of:

• Spring Boot

• Apache Tomcat (e.g., from Tomcat 9 to 10 or higher)

• Java (e.g., Java 17 or 21)

• Any other related libraries or build tools (Maven, etc.)

Has anyone already upgraded the backend stack successfully? Are there any known compatibility issues with the current Headwind MDM codebase and newer Spring Boot or Tomcat versions?

I'd appreciate guidance on the upgrade steps or a reference to any migration documentation or community effort related to this.

Answer 1

Headwind MDM works on Tomcat 9 since it uses libraries existing in Tomcat 9 only. Unfortunately, Tomcat 10 has no backward compatibility, so the migration to Tomcat 10 and higher requires substantial code changes.

Whereas Tomcat 9 is currently being supported by Apache dev team, we understand that one day, sooner or later, it will stop receive security patches and will become outdated. Therefore, the migration to Tomcat 10 and higher is backlogged by the Headwind team. Once the technology stack will be updated, we will notify our users on the website.

We don't see any problems with using newer Java versions with Headwind MDM.