Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE), the Sun OpenSolaris-based distribution for Solaris, Java, and Web 2.0 developers has a new release out: 1/08. Ludo has a post about the integrated web stack as well as a 10-minute screencast. After giving SMF privileges for Apache/mySQL servers, Ludo shows how the user can use a very simple graphical tool to start/stop and configure services. He also walks you through a small PHP/jMaki/Ajax pre-packaged demo with a mySQL backend. He finally uses NetBeans' PHP support and auto-registering of the AMP-stack to author and debug a simple PHP application. Pretty slick!

SXDE also comes with the NetBeans 6/GlassFish v2 pre-configured bundle and if you're using the VMWare image, I would recommend upgrading the amount of memory from 512 to 2Gb. And in case you're wondering, the VMWare image password for root is SXDE (see also the FAQ).

Check out also Ludo's previous interview on GlassFish tooling.

This interview with Ludo Champenois from the GlassFish team discusses the general developer experience with GlassFish as well as with IDEs such as NetBeans and Eclipse. We go into the save/reload paradigm for web and Ajax apps (using jMaki for instance), incremental deployment possibilities, value and role of IDEs for Java EE 5, best OS for developers, and more. You can subscribe to this podcast by searching for "glassfish" on the iTunes online store, by clicking here or using this feed for by any other podcatcher.

Kohsuke provides a glimpse of Metro support in IntelliJ IDEA 7.0. GlassFish/JAX-WS combo is the default to create a Web service. Added: IDEA 7 also has support for GlassFish (here), JSF (JPZ'log's note/a>) and Support for TestNG and JUnit. Some useful IDEA's sites are Home Page and Features and Screenshots.

NetBeans 6 now has its last Milestone (M10) available. If you haven't already tried NetBeans 6, you'll find a new editor (for Java, XML, JSP, etc...) and a new modularized installer among many other improvements. The archive varies from 23MB to 172MB depending on the features you request. GlassFish version 2 build 53 is integrated in the install process. GlassFish-related new features in M10 are described in this earlier post. Java EE improvements include: •  Integrated Visual Web designer for HTML, JSP, etc... •  Much improved Visual Web performance •  Enhanced JavaScript and CSS support •  Greater web services support •  Support Project Woodstock component library

Other new features are listed in the New and Noteworthy document. Overall stability and performance are also improved as with every Milestone. This is the last Milestone with a beta set for August and final bits in November.

MyEclipse Enterprise Workbench 5.5 was recently announced by Genuitec. It features GlassFish v2 support with Start/Stop/Deploy/Undeploy from within the IDE. It also has exploded deployments and Hot-Sync debugging.

Genuitec was present at GlassFish Day a few weeks back in this partner presentation. There is also a screencast to get a feel of what's being made available. Note that MyEclipse is subscription-based: $30-$50/year/developer.

The GlassFish Community is growing larger every day as demonstrated by recent collaboration news with BEA and the valuable feedback to the Maven repository of Java EE 5 libraries. While NetBeans 5.5 is probably the best integrated IDE for GlassFish, support for the Eclipse developers is also important to the GlassFish community and we're glad to see that recent builds of GlassFish v2 are now again usable with Eclipse 3.2.x and WTP 1.5. Make sure you get the Milestone 4 plugin bits here. Install is as easy as unzipping in the Eclipse install directory. As always, help (code, feedback, bug reports) are greatly appreciated.