I've posted the May 09 GlassFish Adoption Report. Some growth from April 09, but not back to the March 09 peak; probably some seasonal drop, possibly some impact from the Oracle announcement. The full report includes the usual download data for run-time and tools bundles, a comparison with JBoss downloads, GeoMap, Registration and Update Center.

I expect to post the June report next week.

Alexis has posted additional entries in his GlassFish à la carte series. Part I and Part II (also see Review) showed how to get a minimal distro and add components to it, including some containers; Part III shows how to create a Custom Layered Distro from GlassFish v3 using the IPS tools.

The distro only bundles pre-existing components; enough to run an ejb/jersey sample. I think that this layered distro arrangement may become quite common for distribution of packages for GFv3 and it nicely shows the power of the modularity in GFv3, IPS and the embedded IPS support in GFv3.

Alexis' examples show how to create the new package, add it to your own IPS repository, and then create a new domain to run the EJB-Jersey sample. The IPS setup is very easy thanks to the documents and binaries from IPS Best Practices project, plus the Package Prototype from Alexis. To learn about IPS, check out Producing and Maintaining Packages (specially Christophe's Prezo) and MakePkgs. All the binaries you need are included in the IPS Toolkit.

The whole thing works like a champ; excerpting some of the key commands from my shell trascript:

# Created a directory for my local repo % pkg/bin/pkg.depotd -p 10001 -d /Users/pelegri/Software/my-repo # port no. and store dir. # downloaded package prototype and renamed it as pkg_proto_epll.py % cat >LICENSE.txt # need a LICENSE file! % pkg/bin/makepkgs -s http://localhost:10001/ -b ../Sample ../Sample/pkg_proto_epll.py % bin/pkg set-publisher -P --enable -O http://pkg.glassfish.org/v3/dev dev.glassfish.org % bin/pkg set-publisher --enable -O http://localhost:10001 localRepo % bin/updatetool # screenshot % bin/pkg install sample-distro # pretty much all done % bin/asadmin create-domain --instanceport 8080 --adminport 4848 mydomain % bin/asadmin start-domain mydomain # download the jersey-ejb sample WAR file % bin/asadmin deploy ../../jersey-samples/jersey-ejb-1.1.1-ea-SNAPSHOT.war % open http://localhost:8080/jersey-ejb/ # screenshot

You probably know that the new, modular, GlassFish v3 is built from (OSGi) components that can be updated using IPS. We assemble these pieces into ready-to-go JavaEE 6 Web Profile and full JavaEE 6 bundles but they can also be used to create à la carte distributions, as Alexis shows in his latest posts.

I recommend you to at least try the first example to get a better understanding of how all these technologies work together. The beauty of GFv3 is that everything is very small and fast - I'm writing this entry from a public WiFi site with pretty moderate connectivity and I'm spending more time waiting on BSC than running the example.

Part I starts with a IPS toolkit image from IPS Best Practices. The toolkit image is 5MB (most of it is the python 2.4 runtime) and has no GlassFish in it. From there, the next step is to download the GF v3 nucleus (2.41MB), which automatically brings in Felix (564KB), Grizzly (943KB) and HK2 (565KB); the IPS packages include the relevant OSGi modules. The rest of that entry shows how to install the updatecenter IPS pkg (that is the biggest package because of python graphical toolkit) and how to use it to add the management pkg, and then creates and starts a domain.

Part II in the series shows first how to install the GFv3 Web Container; then it mirrors Jerome's recent entry on GF v3, OSGi and Spring (that portion gets a bit complex and I see that Jerome already published a simpler version). Part III will continue the main theme of creating an a la carte GF v3 that has the components you want and is yet extensible.

I just posted the Apr'09 report on GlassFish Adoption. All indicators are positive but a bit down from March 09; most of the drop seems seasonal (spring break) but there might be some impact from the IBM rumor and the Oracle announcement. The full report includes the usual download data for run-time bundles, tools(+run-time) bundles (second month for the Eclipse Bundle) and a comparison with JBoss downloads. I also report on data from the GeoMap, Registration and Update Center.

Do you want your favorite package to be one-click away from millions of desktops Around the World? If so, help us add these packages to the GlassFish community repositories. To help this Alexis has been writing a series of blog entries; the last entry explains Different Strategies for Different Types of Components, covering Frameworks and Libraries, Applications Running in GlassFish, Applications Independent of GlassFish and GlassFish Extensions (HK2/OSGi Components).

Previous posts covered: Overview of Concepts and Hibernate as a Sample; more posts will follow soon.

Alexis has published his second article in a series ([1]) on creating IPS packages for GlassFish v3, this time explaining how to create the Hibernate package. The latest post gives detailed instructions on the process needed, including setup, key files and directories, Authoring the Hibernate IPS package example and Publishing and testing. More entries to follow; our goal is to make it very easy for you to publish your favorite packages to the community repository so that hundreds of thousands of people can use them. Also see other entries tagged as IPS and UpdateCenter

Alexis has started a new series to document / encourage more IPS packages for our GFv3-based repository. The first post introduces the packaging and repository concepts and provides links to a number of entry points like the UpdateCenter2 and GlassFish-Repo projects. Alexis's next post will use as an example the existing hibernate package in the v3 repository; then he will document how to create these packages for frameworks, Java EE applications, standalone applications, and GlassFish extensions. Check them out and let us know how the whole experience works for you; our goal is to improve the process. Other related entries are tagged IPS

GlassFish v3 uses EclipseLink as the default JPA provider but it supports Hibernate equally well, and, thanks to the benefits of IPS and the UpdateCenter, that's just a click away: just fire the updatetool and clicking on the package. For more details - but just a few more, there is really not much to tell - check on Mitesh's writeup.

ICEfaces is now in the GlassFish v2 Update Center, this includes the Ajax Push Server and several demos. Check out Ted's Announcement and also the previous report on JSF 2.0 early support. You can also check Ted's 10' Prezo from the Portfolio Launch.

Some recent news of interest:

Jersey 1.0.1 is Now Available with many changes and improvements, including improved integration with Spring, new MIME multipart API, Maven archetypes, samples, and IoC SPI (see Paul's overview). The easiest way to install it is from the Update Centers: GFv3 UC and GFv2 UC. The Jersey team is already working on the next release 1.0.2 (see Roadmap), and also collaborating with the EJB 3.1 EG on the Integration with EJB 3.1.

Arun also recently published two new tips on Jersey: Jersey and Embedded GlassFish and Jersey's Client API. And you may also want to pencil in January 15th for a Webinar set on this area - see GlassFish.TV schedule.

Paul has pushed out a new GeoMap with the data updated through November 2008. We also have updated registration numbers and new Update Center pings. Here is a summary of the numbers: • GFv2 Registrations - 261,506; up from 150K on July 14 and 200K on Sept 25. • GFv3 Prelude Registrations - 17,548 • Admin Pings - 5,217,927 hits from 487,897 different IPs • Update Center pings - 113,208 in October, total is 493,193 users

The usual disclaimers about how each of these metrics has a flaw or another, but also the usual comment that all the indicators are pointing the same way: up.

This is what the Update Center enables: Nov 14: Graeme announces Grails 1.0.4; Nov 17th: Alexis announces its Availability in the Update Center. Way to go Vivek et al! Download GlassFish v3 Prelude, and check the update center for the new packages (you can do it directly from the admin console); then select the "grails" component and install it. Wait a bit (it is 49MB!) and there you go. Also check out Vivek's presentation on Scripting in GFv3 Prelude and Alexis' Grails Intro Screencast.

A compilation of today's news of interest:

A compilation of today's news of interest: