What do I know[!?]

For those who needs to develop for J2ME with more decent APIs and wants to run OpenSolaris x86, the choices were to run Linux or Windows in a virtual machine, or you can try to install MPowerPlayer or MicroEmulator yourself and tinkering around the settings.

Now there is a much easier choice, thanks to Karol Harezlak, who brings us the MicroEmulator support in Netbeans. Here is how easy it is:

1. Download MicroEmulator. Decompress the files into a folder.

2. Download the MicroEmulator Netbeans Plugin. Unzip and there are two nbm files.

3. In Netbeans, Select Tools|Plugins, click on Downloaded tab, and click "Add Plugins..." to add both nbm files.

4. Select Tools|Java Platforms, click on "Add Platform...", select "Java ME MIDP Platform Emulator", click on Next.

5. Select the folder with MicroEmulator in the chooser.

Now you can start develop J2ME applications on Solaris.

Based on my experience, MPowerPlayer does not work very well. Couple things bug me on Solaris:

1. Lacking of preverifer for Solaris. You can either download the source from phoneME project and build it yourself, or use ProGuard preverifier, which is implemented in Java.

2. Netbeans cannot detect MPowerPlayer on Solaris as it does for Mac. So I have to create customized J2ME platform.

3. Netbeans complains String.equalsIgnoreCase does not exist with MPowerPlayer. You can work around it by using jars from Wireless Toolkit, but that's a lot of hassle.

On the other hand, MicroEmulator works out of box with Karol's plugin. Thanks again, Karol.