Easy Mac Installs--MySQL & NetBeans

I just went through two very easy installs on my new mac; the first, MySQL 5.1.5. A few years ago, when I installed on my old mac it was the typical tar ball install that linux users are familiar with. Not bad, especially if you have a canned script to remind you of all the steps.

But now there are two dmg package files that do most of the work for you. And, it installs in /usr/local with a dynamic link to mysql--just like it's supposed to be. The only steps left were to remove the anonymous users, supply the root and admin passwords and reboot to start the service. Easy.

Next was NetBeans 6.9. I have been using 6.8 for a few projects, and have loved the support for groovy and especially grails, but I have held off upgrading while in full development mode. But now, with a new grails project in it's infant stages, I decided to make the move.

Installation was easy. I did have to manually replace the 6.8 item with 6.9 on my doc, but other than that all went easy. It found my current projects and I was able to run unit tests from within the IDE. Once again, easy.

Happy coding...

Grails 1.3.4, Groovy 7 and NetBeans 6.8

After about a year of doing nothing but Adobe Action Script projects, I'm finally back to a java/groovy/grails project. So, I downloaded the latest grails and fired up my version of NetBeans (6.8) and generated some code. Here's what I discovered...

First, NetBeans is very groovy/grails friendly. I was able to generate the project inside the IDE. I then dropped to the command line to generate domain classes and tests. I was able to run the full test suite inside the IDE, but I still prefer the command line.

I noticed that the generated code doesn't include an ant script, but just as well. I'm so sick of the XML crap, and the grails command line does everything you need, so...

Next step is to generate controllers, and maybe a few views, but I usually use grails as a JSON or XML server with a Flex/Action Script UI. I'm also creating all the unit tests as I go and running them from inside the IDE and from the command line.

Next post will discuss the controllers and any problems related to getting the application into production. So far everything works as advertised--better than previous versions, and very productive. My new best friend...