|
Open Source Java Application Management: BlueGlue and MyJavaPack
by Drew Falkman
I don't think I'm alone in having a love-hate relationship with open source. The whole concept makes so much sense: community development gives us all better tools. But the flip side is that documentation is scarce, managing patches and updates a nightmare at best, and technical support? HA! Then, you install a bunch of different tools with overlapping classes and conflicting ports and...oy. Three days later and you haven't even started development yet. But as we move into a new world where open source tools proliferate, a number of different companies are looking for ways to simplify this process. A new genre of tools is emerging: open source infrastructure management. Imagine, if you will, having an integrated installation tool (think adding/removing Windows components through the control panel). Two tools are now available to help with this task: OpenLogic BlueGlue and and Open-Centric Solutions' MyJavaPack Project.
I wanted to take a look at these two options and see if either could help manage the nightmare of open source stacks that can—and often does—occur in projects using these J2EE tools.
Open-Centric Solutions' MyJavaPack Project
MyJavaPack is, essentially, a tie-in of two other open source projects: IzPack, an installer tool and Ant, a building tool. MyJavaPack is really just an installer—it is not equivalent to BlueGlue, and really shouldn't be compared at that level. However, it's worth mentioning in that it can greatly ease the burden of installations. The basic process is this: you download the installer and run it. This can be done either as a visual application or at the command line. While running the installer, you select which of the available applications you wish to install and MyJavaPack initiates the downloads and starts installers automatically. Beyond just downloading and installing, MyJavaPack checks MD5 checksums to ensure the integrity of every package and it randomly selects from available mirror sites.
Using MyJavaPack
Overall, MyJavaPack was fairly easy to use. On Windows XP (SP2), I simply clicked the run.bat file and it ran just fine. After agreeing to the Apache license agreement for MyJavaPack, I received the list of available projects and it proceeded, one-by-one, to download and install them on my machine. I was prompted for all installation options, the installers ran individually and outside of MyJavaPack. Executing from the command line is a little trickier, but not rocket science by any means. Simply remove the applications you don't want form the existing Ant build script. Then run it.
Figure 1. IzPack Installation
MyJavaPack is efficient, helpful and coordinated, but is really only one step away from doing what you would do as a matter of course anyway. The downside is that you're limited to the versions of the applications that are available. Of course, you could create your own Ant build and do it yourself, but that would really defeat the purpose, now wouldn't it?
New on the Java Boutique:
New Review:
Time Management Made Easy with the Quartz Enterprise Job Scheduler
Why not just use the Java timer API? This open source scheduling
API boasts simplicity, ease-of-integration, a well-rounded feature
set, and it's free!
New Applet:
Reverse Complement
Reverse Complement is a simple applet that converts DNA or RNA
sequences into three useful formats.
Elsewhere on internet.com:
WebDeveloper Java
Lots of Java information on webdeveloper.com
WDVL Java
Thorough Java resource at the Web Developer's Virtual Library.
ScriptSearch Java
Hundreds of free Java code files to download.
jGuru: Your View of the Java Universe
Customizable portal with online training, FAQs, regular news updates, and tutorials.
|
