JRuby and the Glassfish Gem

Posted by Christopher Rigor on February 21, 2010 
Filed Under Ruby on Rails

The glassfish gem is another way to run a rails application in jruby. Before glassfish, I was using jruby script/server.

Using glassfish is simple. Install the gem and run jruby -S glassfish. However, I got a “missing gem” error.

$ sudo jgem install glassfish
Successfully installed glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java
1 gem installed

$ jruby -S glassfish
Starting GlassFish server at: 0.0.0.0:3000 in development environment...
Writing log messages to: /Users/crigor/labs/log/development.log.
Press Ctrl+C to stop.

Missing the Rails 2.3.4 gem. Please `gem install -v=2.3.4 rails`, update your RAILS_GEM_VERSION setting in config/environment.rb for the Rails version you do have installed, or comment out RAILS_GEM_VERSION to use the latest version installed.

rails 2.3.4 is installed. In fact, jruby script/server works

$ jruby script/server
=> Booting Mongrel
=> Rails 2.3.4 application starting on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=> Call with -d to detach
=> Ctrl-C to shutdown server

I checked log/development.log and found an error on the run method on config/boot.rb. 

INFO: JRuby version is: 1.4.0
Feb 21, 2010 8:45:12 PM com.sun.grizzly.jruby.rack.RackApplicationPoolFactory getRackApplocationPool
SEVERE: exit
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/boot.rb:38:in `run'
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/boot.rb:11:in `boot!'
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/boot.rb:110
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/boot.rb:31:in `require'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/environment.rb:7
	from /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/config/environment.rb:31:in `require'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:31:in `require'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java/lib/rack/adapter/rails.rb:98:in `load_application'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java/lib/rack/adapter/rails.rb:75:in `initialize'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java/lib/jruby/rack/rails.rb:25:in `new'
	from /opt/local/share/java/jruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java/lib/jruby/rack/rails.rb:25:in `new'
	from <script>:1

gem ‘rails’, version raised an error, thus the message “Missing the Rails 2.3.4 gem”. I’m sure that the gem is installed and jruby script/server works, so I inspected the error.

can't activate rack (~> 1.0.0, runtime) for ["actionpack-2.3.4", "rails-2.3.4"], already activated rack-1.1.0 for ["glassfish-1.0.2-universal-java"]

Look at that, it’s the familiar rubygems dependency problem. glassfish requires rack >= 0.4.0 but rubygems will activate the newest gem available which is version 1.1.0. rails 2.3.4 requires rack ~> 1.0.0, thus the conflict. This is the problem that bundler is trying to solve. Check my other post or the bundler readme for more details on the dependency problem.

The easiest way to get glassfish running is by removing rack 1.1.0. I’m not using it anyway. 

$ sudo jgem uninstall rack

Select gem to uninstall:
 1. rack-1.0.1
 2. rack-1.1.0
 3. All versions
> 2
Successfully uninstalled rack-1.1.0

$ jruby -S glassfish
Starting GlassFish server at: 0.0.0.0:3000 in development environment...
Writing log messages to: /Users/crigor/admoolabs/labs/log/development.log.
Press Ctrl+C to stop.

Go to localhost:3000, click “About your application’s environment” and check development.log

Feb 21, 2010 9:03:38 PM sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl invoke0
INFO: 

Processing Rails::InfoController#properties (for 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1%0 at 2010-02-21 21:03:38) [GET]

Feb 21, 2010 9:03:38 PM sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl invoke0
INFO:   SQL (28.0ms)   SELECT version FROM schema_migrations

Feb 21, 2010 9:03:38 PM sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl invoke0
INFO: Completed in 302ms (View: 57, DB: 28) | 200 OK [http://localhost/rails/info/properties]

In the future, I will try bundler or loading the gems myself. I already tried this before with ruby 1.8.7 when rails 2.3.5 wasn’t working with bundler 0.9.4.

Please share in the comments if you have other ways of running your jruby apps. Are you using glassfish or a different java app server?

Comments

  • I had the opposite problem. I had done a jgem update and glassfish went and clobbered my JRuby installation by upgrading rack to 1.1.0 when Rail 2.3.5 needed rack 1.0.1.

    I deinstalled rack which also made glassfish and actionpack deinstall.

    I then reinstalled rack and actionpack and bingo, all sorted!

  • I've experimented today with the glassfish gem and a sinatra app and bundler. Works great on my dev box (OSX) but I failed to get it running on an Ubuntu Karmic Server. Also works with thin but and cRuby but then I have to include gem 'thin' in the Gemfile. Don't need to do that with glassfish.

  • crigor

    What was the issue with Ubuntu? I am using the glassfish gem for a rails app on Gentoo and it works fine.

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