During the preparations for our EclipseCon talk "Web Applications with Eclipse RT and Docker in the Cloud" about our first Docker project, we spent quite some time building Docker images for Virgo powered applications. We investigated how to improve the continuous delivery of such applications using Gradle. In the first step we used the 'Gradle Docker plugin' to get started quickly. In your build script you specify Docker...
Read MoreSeveral months ago I took over the project lead for Virgo. The project code base and vision had been established by SpringSource dm Server[1] and later on by VMware[2] and SAP[3]. After an assessment of what Virgo can do today and where we see a future for Virgo in the application server market, we want to share our vision for the future of Virgo with...
Read MoreSome months ago, the Docker Team announced Docker 0.6.5[1]. Since that release it is possible to give your container names - this makes it much easier to find the correct container to interact with. It didn’t take long that I got used to this new feature. Together with the freshly introduced explicit linking this is a huge security improvement. Links allow containers to discover and securely communicate...
Read MoreYes, we love building modular web applications, if they just were easier to deploy on a server! Wrapping OSGi applications in WAR files, apparently still the most popular deployment option for RAP, results in a complicated setup: a web app containing an OSGi runtime together with all bundles, configuration, and a bridge servlet that delegates requests to the embedded OSGi - that's hard to build,...
Read More[caption width="140" align="alignright"] Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation[/caption]As of recently, Oracle is providing a JVM for Raspberry Pi that performs well enough to use the Pi as an application server. Raspberry Pi and Java haven't been a great couple in the past, but with the new JVM that added native floating point operations this is history. If you are interested, here...
Read MoreIt is a common procedure to read the initial configuration of a classic Java program from a file system properties file. Once the program is up and running, changes made to the configuration will be ignored unless you deliberately watch for changes to the properties file. OSGi runtimes provide a ConfigurationAdmin[1] to manage your initial configuration and handle changes during runtime. With Eclipse Gemini Blueprint[2] it is...
Read MoreA few weeks ago a friend of mine enthusiastically told me about Docker[1] in a lunch break. Yesterday he supported me in creating my first Dockerfile and it was an amazing experience I must admit. But let's start at the beginning. What is Docker? Docker is a Linux Container Runtime, that runs Unix processes with strong guarantees of isolation. Under the hood Docker uses LXC[2] (LinuX Containers) which...
Read MoreThis is just a heads up for those interested in developing RAP applications with Virgo. I finished updating our tutorial to RAP 2.0 and Virgo 3.6.x (aka Sky). The first part guides you through the setup of your Eclipse IDE and Virgo Jetty Server. The second part is a short walkthrough on how to create a Hello World Web Application Bundle (WAB) with RAP. Feedback welcome. [1] Developing...
Read MoreWith the latest RAP 2.0 milestone M2[1], you can run RAP based Web Application Bundles (WAB) with the unmodified RAP artifacts installed into your Virgo Jetty Server[2]. No more Eclipse buddy classloading required as noted in a previous post. Before version 2.0 M2, the RAP framework did not try to load configuration classes from the thread's context class loader (TCCL). Therefore, it was not possible to...
Read MoreThis post shows how to develop RAP applications with Virgo. The first part guides you through the setup for a Virgo Server instance and how to extend it to become a RAP runtime. The second part is a short walkthrough of how to create a Hello World RAP application using the new RAP OSGi integration. Extend Virgo Kernel 3.0 to support the RAP Widget Toolkit 1.5 Setup...
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