Jakarta EE Developer Survey 2019

The Jakarta EE 2019 Developer Survey is available!

Take the survey today and help the community gain a better understanding of what’s in store for Java innovation. This is your chance to share your thoughts and experiences and help shape the future for Jakarta EE!

Jakarta EE 2019 Developer Survey
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JakartaEEMkt

Responses will be collected until March 25, 2019, at 11:59 PM Pacific Time

Amazon Corretto 8

UPDATE! I have updated the option of running Corretto in Docker to using the amazoncorretto Docker image available from Docker Hub.

Amazon Corretto is a production-ready distribution of OpenJDK with long-term support including performance- and security updates provided by Amazon.

Tweet announcing Amazon Coretto 8

Amazon provides installation packages and instructions for Linux, Windows, and macOS, as well as a Docker. The latest installation package is based on OpenJDK version 1.8.0_202:

$ java -version
openjdk version "1.8.0_202"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Corretto-8.202.08.2 (build 1.8.0_202-b08)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Corretto-8.202.08.2 (build 25.202-b08, mixed mode)
$

If you don’t want to, or isn’t able to install Corretto on your workstation, t is pretty straightforward to try it out using Docker:

$docker run -it amazoncorretto

bash-4.2# java -version
openjdk version "1.8.0_202"
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Corretto-8.202.08.1 (build 1.8.0_202-b08)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Corretto-8.202.08.1 (build 25.202-b08, mixed mode)

bash-4.2#

Amazon Corretto is licensed under the same license as OpenJDK (GPLv2 with CPE) and there are no costs associated with using it. Amazon will provide quarterly security updates to Corretto 8 at least until June 2023.

But Java 8 is sooo old!

Relax, Amazon plans to make Corretto 11 available during the first half of 2019. Corretto 11 will be based on OpenJDK 11.

Java EE with NetBeans 10

The Apache NetBeans project is really shaping up. Version 10.0 was released on the 27th of December 2018. The main features added since version 9.0 are listed on the download page. For me personally, the most important feature is the JDK 11 Support.

So, what about Java EE then?

Until all the NetBeans sources have been transferred from Oracle to Apache and incorporated into the Apache NetBeans build, an additional step is required in order to get Netbeans set up for Java EE development.

The first thing you need to do is to add the NetBeans 8.2 Distribution Update Center. Select Tools->Plugins in Apache NetBeans 10.0. Then click on the Settings tab and choose Add. Paste in the URL:

http://updates.netbeans.org/netbeans/updates/8.2/uc/final/distribution/catalog.xml.gz

Update Plugin Center Configuration

After saving the configuration, the next step is to select the Available Plugins tab and type java ee in the search field.

Search for Java EE plugins

As a minimum, check the plugin called Java EE Base and click the Install button. Follow the instructions and accept the licenses. NetBeans will need to restart before continuing after the installation.

After this, you are able to set up a Java EE server as shown with GlassFish 5.0 below. Choose Tools->Servers and then click Add Server.

GlassFish 5.0 with NetBeans 10.0

Happy Coding!

Run and Debug a WildFly Swarm application from NetBeans

Java EE developers using NetBeans are used to be able to run and debug their thin-war applications in their application server of choice directly from NetBeans. When developing microservices packaged as über-or hollow-jars, you expect the same effortless way of running and debugging. The good news is that you can. In this post, I show step-by-step how to run and debug the WildFly Swarm version of CloudEE Duke in NetBeans.

Run WildFly Swarm application

The easiest way of running CloudEE Duke in NetBeans is to edit the Run project action for the project. Right click on CloudEE Duke, select properties and Actions as shown below.

Configure the Execute Goals to package wildfly-swarm:run, remove all the default properties and your’re all set. Run Project (F6 ) will start the application using the WildFly Swarm Maven Plugin.

Debug WildFly Swarm Appliction

To enable debugging, you follow the same steps as described above, but in this case it is the Debug Project action you select.

Execute Goals is configured the same way as for Run, but in the Set Properties, you need to configure a debug port for WildFly Swarm. This is done by setting the swarm.debug.port property, e.g. to 9000.

Debug Project Ctrl-F5 will start the application in debug mode. Note that the execution will halt while waiting for the debugger to attach. See the screenshot below for how it will look in the log.

Select Debug->Attach Debugger from the menu in NetBeans. Change the value for Port to 9000 (or the value you chose in the previous step) and click OK.

To verify the setup, set a breakpoint at line 16 in the class HelloWorldEndpoint.

Then navigate to http://localhost:8080/hello. The execution will stop at the breakpoint at line 16 in HelloWorldEndpoint.

Summing up 2016…

…and looking forward to 2017!

2016 was a pretty eventful and great year for me personally. I had the opportunity to speak at a number of conferences including Jfokus, JavaLand, GIDS, CybercomDev, jPrime, Devoxx UK, JavaDay Minsk, JavaOne, JavaDay Kiev, Devoxx MA, Øredev. Links to talks and videos for most of these talks can be found on my Speaker Bio page.

I will continue speaking at conferences and events throughout 2017 as well. First up are Snowcamp.io, Devnexus, jDays, JavaLand, Riga Dev Days, DevDays Vilnius. And I still have some CFPs to submit talks to…

I also took over as JUG leader of Javaforum, the Java User Group in Malmö, and we had four meetings during 2016. The goal for 2017 is to continue with one meeting each quarter.

At the end of the year I won one of the associate seats in the Executive Committee of the Java Community Process. I am really looking forward to starting this work (I am actually going to London for our first face-to-face meeting tomorrow…).

If I should pick one single thing as the highlight of 2016, it would be the accepted to join the Java Champions. It was a surprise and an honor to be handed the Java Champions jacket from Arun Gupta at the closing Keynote of Devoxx UK.

MVC 1.0 Generator

The JPA Modeler plugin for NetBeans provides visual support for creating, designing and editing entity relationship models. It also provides Java code generation and new for version 1.5.5 is that it provides support for generating MVC 1.0 applications.

Check out MVC 1.0 Generator Tutorial to see how it works.

JSP

Kudos to Gaurav Gupta (@jGauravGupta) for this awesome tool! Another proof that NetBeans is the IDE for developing Java EE applications!

Follow @jpamodeler on Twitter!

NetBeans Dream Team

It is great to start 2016 with the announcement that I have been included in the NetBeans Dream Team!

I always try to be as objective and unbiased as possible when writing and talking about tools and technologies, but I guess it has been pretty obvious that NetBeans is my favorite IDE and in my opinion the best IDE for Java EE development. Being a member of the Dream Team will enable me to contribute even more to make this great tool even greater.

More information about the NetBeans Dream Team can be found on the wiki.

Tech Tip – Running Glassfish Nightly Builds in NetBeans

If you have tried adding a recent nightly build of GlassFish 4.1 to the server configurations in NetBeans, you may have come across the following problem:

glassfish-netbeans-error

The solution is as follows:

cd glassfish4/glassfish/lib/install/applications/__admingui/WEB-INF/lib/
mv console-core-4.2-SNAPSHOT.jar console-4.1.jar

This deficiency of the NetBeans server plugin is covered by Bug #250165

NetBeans and Android Tip

Developing Android applications using NetBeans is usually as easy as stealing candy from a baby. But the last couple of days I have been struggling with an application that uses a couple of external libraries. The other developers (using Eclipse) have a couple of scripts that they run to get the .so files included in the .apk file. When I tried running the same scrips on the .apk generated from NetBeans, the application failed to start in the emulator. I nearly switched to Eclipse (god forbid), but then I saw the light again. As it turns out, NetBeans does not include the java api jar-files in the external libs in the dex-file by default which resulted in a ClassNotFoundException.

The solution is as simple as you would expect when you have used NetBeans for a while. Add the following to the build.xml file in the project root (replace the dummy values for the signjar target):

<target name="-pre-jar">
   <copy todir="${build.classes.dir}">
      <fileset dir="${external.libs.dir}">
         <include name="*.jar"/>
      </fileset>
   </copy>
</target>
<target name="-post-jar">
   <zip update="true" destfile="${dist.apk}">
      <zipfileset dir="${external.libs.dir}" includes="*.so" prefix="lib/armeabi"/>
   </zip>
   <zip destfile="tmp.apk">
      <zipfileset src="${dist.apk}">
         <exclude name="META-INF/*.*" />
      </zipfileset>
   </zip>
   <move file="tmp.apk" tofile="${dist.apk}" />
   <signjar jar="${dist.apk}" alias="alias" storepass="secret" keypass="secret2" keystore="my_keystore"/>
</target>

You also need to add external.libs.dir=<your lib folder> to you <project root>/nbproject/project.properties file.

Now you can install the resulting .apk file using adb install or by running/debugging directly from NetBeans. Remember to follow the tip for asset-files in a previous post if you have that kind of resources.