I'm late - Vivek and Jacob announced it ten days ago - but I can't let it go by: the 0.9 release of the GlassFish Gem is now available.

So, what does Glassfish gem get you? As Jacob writes... Briefly, it gives you everything from glassfish v3 prelude in a small, easy-to-use package. It's a production-quality application server with all of the features that I've been talking about here: auto-runtime configuration, merb/rack support, application auto-detection, etc. ... plus a toaster... :-) Check out Vivek and Jacob's writeups for details, including the reference to the toaster.

JRuby 1.1.2 is released. They key features are reduced startup time, improved performance and 95 issues fixed since the previous release. Read how to Get Started with GlassFish Gem and deploy popular Rails applications using JRuby 1.1.2 and Gem.

Heard on the blogosphere ...

Teflon Ted's blog entry Rails Doesn't Scale is betting on JRuby and GlassFish. It says: "Personally my money is on JRuby (and Glassfish) for the long haul; if you haven't checked out Glassfish yet, you're doing yourself a disservice!."

Have you checked out GlassFish v3 gem for JRuby ?

It is now hosted on RubyForge and can be easily installed using "gem install glassfish". Read more details here.

All natural Rubies have imperfection but become of excellent quality after treatment and command a large premium. Pramod has started the treatment of GlassFish v3 gem and published an updated version which is already 20% smaller (2.4 MB instead of 2.9 MB). A consolidated list of improvements is described in my blog. Help us in further treatment by downloading the gem, trying it out, and filing bugs on issues you care.

Also read How to Build GF v3 Gem and Mephisto on GlassFish v3 Gem.

I just wrote a quick spotlight on Arun's Mephisto on the GlassFish v3 Gem earlier today and, coincidentally, Jerome just explained How to Build the GFv3 gem. Some useful background links include Ruby Gems, GlassFish Gem for Rails, jRuby and NetBeans Ruby Pack.

A tip from Arun: • Mephisto with GlassFish v3 Gem, building on Earlier Work (also see about Gems).

We have been improving how jRuby and GlassFish run together (entries) and Jerome now has a Ruby Gem that makes the process as simple as possible. Ruby Gems are the Ruby package mechanism, similar in spirit to RPMs or pkg(1) for Solaris, which enables very natural encapsulation of the functionality.

The result is: • Install jRuby • gem install rails • gem install glassfish • gem install whatever else you need • create your rails app • run your rails app! -- runs on GlassFish! Can't get any simpler than that!

The GlassFish GEM is one of the first concrete deliveries from GlassFish v3; don't rush to go production on this :-), but the future is bright! See more details in Arun's writeup and in the Mail Thread.

Added: Also see the report by Charles.