Glassfish v3 embedded, are we there yet?

I've been preparing a new Release Candidate of IWebMvc2 (get it here). This time I wanted to part from Jetty as, although easy to setup, the results were not that amazing (a first access of around forty five seconds required to compile a complex JSP that relies on many tag files). And I've been following closely the development of Glassfish v3 (I really hope IBM does not buy Sun) so this seemed like a perfect opportunity to test the new embedded server feature.

I started collecting some information from here and there and it seemed easy. I just needed a new repository location

<ibiblio name="glassfish" m2compatible="true"
   root="http://download.java.net/maven/glassfish" />

And a couple of lines in my ivy.xml file

<dependency org="org.glassfish.embedded" name="glassfish-embedded-api"
   rev="3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14" conf="run->default" />
<dependency org="org.glassfish.embedded" name="glassfish-embedded-web"
   rev="3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14" conf="run->default" />

Unfortunately GFv3Embedded does not offer any Ant tasks yet so you need a Java class. Something like:

EmbeddedInfo ei = new EmbeddedInfo();
Server server = new Server(ei);
server.start();

Tedious but hardly a showstopper. On the bright side the server instance is fully configurable and, for example, a pool/datasource can be added via code (mimicking the admin console commands)

CommandExecutor ce = server.getCommandExecutor();
options.setProperty("datasourceclassname", "myDataSourceClass");
options.setProperty("DEFAULT", "myConnPool");
ce.execute("create-jdbc-connection-pool", options);

Or a WAR deployed dynamically

options.setProperty("DEFAULT", "c:\\temp\\iwebmvc2.war");
ce.execute("deploy", options);

So far so good. The surprise came later while executing the script. Just take a look of a trimmed version of the output

[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.embedded#glassfish-embedded-api;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.distributions#web;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.distributions#nucleus;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.osgi-platforms#felix;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found com.sun.enterprise#hk2;0.3.32-prelude-b28
[ivy:retrieve] found com.sun.enterprise#hk2-core;0.3.32-prelude-b28
[ivy:retrieve] found com.sun.enterprise#config;0.3.32-prelude-b28
[ivy:retrieve] found com.sun.enterprise#auto-depends;0.3.32-prelude-b28
[ivy:retrieve] found com.sun.enterprise#tiger-types-osgi;0.3.32-prelude-b28
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.core#api-exporter;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found com.sun.enterprise#osgi-adapter;0.3.32-prelude-b28
[ivy:retrieve] found woodstox#wstx-asl;3.2.3 in public
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish#javax.xml.stream;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.core#glassfish;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.core#kernel;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.common#glassfish-api;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.common#internal-api;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.admin#config-api;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.common#common-util;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.external#grizzly-module;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.common#stats77;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.deployment#deployment-common;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.external#asm-all-repackaged;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found com.sun.pkg#pkg-client;1.0.7-15.1269
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.flashlight#flashlight-framework;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.flashlight#flashlight-agent;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.admin#monitoring-core;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.admin#admin-cli;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.admin#cli-framework;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.admin#launcher;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.branding#branding;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.distributions#nucleus-base;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.docs#basedocs;3.0-Prelude in javanet
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.deployment#deployment-admin;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.deployment#deployment-autodeploy;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.external#javadb;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found javadb#javadb;10.2.2.1-20070823
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.web#webtier-all;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.web#web-gui-plugin-common;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.web#web-glue;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.web#web-cli;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.common#container-common;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.common#glassfish-naming;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.transaction#transaction-internal-api;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish#javax.transaction;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish#javax.resource;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish#javax.persistence;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.connectors#connectors-internal-api;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish.deployment#dol;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish#javax.servlet;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish#javax.annotation;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
[ivy:retrieve] found org.glassfish#javax.enterprise.deploy;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14
...and so on...

And worse....

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: FAILED DOWNLOADS ::
:: ^ see resolution messages for details ^ ::
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: org.glassfish.osgi-platforms#felix;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14!felix.distribution-fragment
:: com.sun.enterprise#hk2;0.3.32-prelude-b28!hk2.hk2-jar
:: org.glassfish.core#glassfish;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14!glassfish.hk2-jar
:: org.glassfish.core#kernel;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14!kernel.hk2-jar
:: org.glassfish.common#glassfish-api;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14!glassfish-api.hk2-jar
:: org.glassfish.common#internal-api;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14!internal-api.hk2-jar
:: org.glassfish.admin#config-api;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14!config-api.hk2-jar
:: org.glassfish.common#common-util;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14!common-util.hk2-jar
:: org.glassfish.common#stats77;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14!stats77.hk2-jar
:: org.glassfish.deployment#deployment-common;3.0-Prelude-Embedded-b14!deployment..
....and many many more....

What was that? A horror movie? In the end I was able to find a JAR file that packaged every dependency (glassfish-embedded-all-10.0-SNAPSHOT.jar) but it looked like overkill (I don't want EJB, JMS, ...). At least I've learned something: Jetty works wonders for me, it's just I hadn't realized it fully :-)

So kudos to the GFv3 team, a full blown embeddable Application Server is a nice feature to have. But there's work till it reaches (something that resembles) a mature option.