SpaceFan

An important part of any Software development is to ensure that deployment works as desired. While in previous times a developer was trying to get a separate server to test the deployment, this can now be done through virtualization on the very same system.
So here is my journey and approach to it which I prepared in order to do a further development of an internal project at Sun.

The Goal which I’ve set myself for this is:
Use Open Source Solution and latest Technology to create a Development and Deployment environment on one system (in my case: MacBook Pro).

Here is a summary of the steps I’m taking:

• Installation of IDE (Netbeans)
• Installation of hypervisor software to run Opensolaris on the MacBook (VirtualBox)
• Installation of OpenSolaris into VirtualBox
• Installation and configuration of Deployment environment (MySQL and Glassfish)
• Configuration of VirtualBox for secure network connection of Host-System and IDE towards MySQL/GLassfish
• Configuration of Netbeans to Deploy to MySQL and Glassfish on Opensolaris within the VirtualBox
• Test of the Development and Deployment environment with a simple application

Today’s part of the effort: Let’s start easy and first do the IDE installation and the pure VirtualBox install.

Step 1:  Installation of NetBeans
This is straight-forward: Just go to the Netbeans Website and download the MacOS version of Netbeans. The Website will recognize the browser of your system and propose the version for your Operating System.

Decide if you want the full version or a sub-version, that table on the website is quite helpful. If you are looking to do a full-featured development in Java, use the “Java-Bundle”. If you also want to do some work in Ruby or PHP, give it some extra space and use the “All-Bundle”.

The download will typically be a DMG-File, which will contain the installer and the application. While your system downloads the bits and bytes, you might as well check out the latest news from the community or search in the Document section which has a great repository of current tutorials and learning trails.

Once fully downloaded, open the DMG file. It will look similar to this:

Window of downloaded DMG File for Netbeans

It is quite easy to follow the steps of the installation. Just click on the package-like symbol and you will soon have Netbeans installed on your system.

Step 2: Install Virtualbox
This also is quite seamless given the latest Version of VirtualBox. When you go to the VirtualBox Download page you can select the right version for your system. For the Macbook just select the latest one for “OS X Hosts” and download it. The downloaded DMG file again will have the installer and the app and you can install Virtualbox by clicking the installer in the opened DMG file:

Window of DMG File for VirtualBox, ready for install

Again, as for the Netbeans install, simply click on the package-like symbol, follow the respective instructions and you’ll have VirtualBox installed.

What have you got now and what’s next?
Well, you now have a fully installed IDE so you can already start with your development efforts. Go and explore Netbeans and test out it’s functionality

Next week we go and start the installation of OpenSolaris.

You want to prepare for that?  Well, then download the latest version of OpenSolaris. You can either go for the official release (as of the writing of this post it is 2009.06)  or (same as I’ve done) go for the latest development. For that you might want to download from genunix.org which holds candidate builds and get the latest build as an ISO-file

Remember, these are large files (772MB for the candidate build and the official release is 677 MB ) but you only download them once and after the install you can use the much faster update mechanism of OpenSolaris

See you at the next post