A tip from Arun: JRuby on Rails, NetBeans 6 and GlassFish V2 - Simplified Steps

The Divas had a tip for a video of Tor showcasing Java and Ruby Development. It is very nice, based on the demo at the JavaOne keynote. You can watch it, check the Script, or look at several other resources. But..

... I had not realized the NetBeans folks had done so much work at the NetBeans.tv site! The theme for the site is visual - videos and pictures. They have several sections emphasizing different areas: Members of the Community, Interviews with key Developers, Technology and Screencasts, Extending NB and Using the Platform and Trip Reports. Pretty nice!

There is a lot happening in the GlassFish and NetBeans communities related to Ruby and Rails. Several of the developments have been presented at JavaPolis, read about it from Ludo, Jean-Francois, and Charles, and here is my recap and overview:

On the JRuby front, Tom, Charles, Ola, et al have Released JRuby 0.9.2 focusing on compatibility and basic performance (direct generation of bytecodes will come later), just presented two Talks at JavaPolis and you can also try directly the WebStart-enabled IRB console that Tom posted recently.

On the NetBeans side, Tor et al have been making very good progress on adding Ruby support to NB 6.0 (Introduction, Update). The editing part uses jRuby underneath (that's should just be an internal dependency) but I need to find out more about what type of debugging is available under what conditions.

Finally, Ashish has a good series of blogs covering several of the ways to run a Rails app depending on how you package it, who handles the HTTP requests, and what runtime is used. First two blogs on how to use jRuby as the runtime inside GlassFish: first deploying a WAR and then how to Use Derby as the database. Then he shows how to use the GlassFish's CGI support and Ruby native first one Rails App and then Multiple Apps.

All this is pretty bleeding edge, but stay tuned. This is obviously an area of keen interest and usefulness, so expect continuous improvements over the next year.

Ruby on Rails certainly has triggered a lot of attention and it is raising the bar on ease of development for CRUD (or BREAD!). One can argue about maintenability or Greenfield but the experience of the first few minutes is undoubtable good, so I expect people to try to match or exceed it. In a recent blog, Geertjan talks about CRUD in two blogs on The Best Feature in NB 5.5 [1] and [2], and Tim reflects on that at Rails Lesson. Let's see what else shows up at JavaOne...

PS. It is hard for TA to accuratedly track all the relevant activity in NetBeans-land, but one recent blog worth checking is this List of New Features in NB 5.5.