Miles to go …

Microsoft released Windows 7 Beta 1 – the next major version of Vista, download here. There are tons of improvments mostly centered around making the content easily & intuitively accessible. But hey, Mac OSX already serves that purpose well for quite some time

But I still want to make sure that our Rails stack (NetBeans, GlassFish, and MySQL) work fine on it. And it very well do, without any issues, as you’ll realize at the end of this blog

Lets first get started with installing Windows 7 Beta as a Virtual Box image. Few points to note here:

• Only IE can be used for downloading Windows 7 Beta, FireFox & Safari on Mac do nothing (confirmed). With a growing share of both Mac and Firefox (TODO: add a link), I think this combination needs to be at least included on their testing matrix. There was no clear way to file bugs but sent feedback using “Send Feedback” button that is omnipresent on top-right corner of each window.
• The 64-bit Windows 7 installer do not work on Virtual Box 2.1 installed on a 64-bit MacBook Pro. So had to download the 32-bit installer instead This seems to be a Virtual Box bug so filed #3027.
• The 32-bit and 64-bit files are named “7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULFRE_EN_DVD-32bit.iso” and “7000.0.081212-1400_client_en-us_Ultimate-GB1CULXFRE_EN_DVD.iso” respectively. If you noticed the only difference is the letter “X” before “FRE” . This required a deep look to spot the difference and very non-intuitive. Frankly, I had to put the two names above each other to spot the difference

Here are my Virtual Box VM settings:

Anyway, after that the install process was pretty simple. Anybody who has previous Windows install experience can vouch the installation mostly  goes seamless, as was the case here. The complete installation using screen snapshots is shown here. Some of the snapshots from my install process are shown below:

Ta da … after multiple boots during installation, the final welcome screen shows up as following:

Even the beta install required an activation key. The key is shown on the screen after the download. A freshly installed Windows 7 Beta shows the following disk properties:

Lets install our Rails stack.

Download JDK 6 U11 (TODO: check with or w/o NetBeans), MySQL 5.1, NetBeans 6.5 (which includes GlassFish v3 Prelude, JRuby 1.1.4, Rails 2.1, and other goodies)! Alternatively, you can also download JDK 6 U11 + NetBeans 6.5 co-bundle here.

Install them in the same order by double-clicking on the downloaded bundle and taking all default values.

First MySQL installation …

MySQL is automatically started and registered with Windows as a service.

And then NetBeans installation …

Because of the default access controls setup in Windows 7 (as in Vista as well), NetBeans need to be run as an administrator by right-clicking, selecting “Run as administrator”. Screencast #26 shows to develop, run, and debug a Rails application on GlassFish v3 Prelude. Here are some screen snapshots as the steps outlined in that screencast are performed.

Here is a snapshot that shows how a simple Rails application can be created:

Running the Rails application on GlassFish v3 Prelude …

And now debugging using the NetBeans IDE …

Overall, I’m happy with the first experience of Windows 7 Beta 1. The install process was smooth and it was nice to see the picture of a fish on the welcome screen. They can even consider swapping it with a glassfish

TOTD #64 showed how to install OpenSolaris 2008/11 using Virtual Box and run the same stack there. So be it Windows 7 or Open Solaris 2008/11, you can develop, run, and debug your Rails application with pleasure using NetBeans and GlassFish. And of course, Mac OS X

What is your primary Operating System for development ?

Do you use any Virtualization software for trying multiple Operating Systems ? Which one ?

Technorati: totd windows windows7 virtualbox netbeans glassfish mysql rubyonrails jruby

Related posts:

1. JRuby-on-Rails and MySQL on GlassFish on OpenSolaris in Virtual Box VM
2. TOTD #64: OpenSolaris 2008/11 using Virtual Box
3. TOTD #32: Rails Deployment on GlassFish v3 from NetBeans IDE
4. jMaki on Rails – Reloaded for NetBeans 6.1 beta & Rails 2.0
5. TOTD #13: Setup Mongrel for JRuby-on-Rails applications on Windows