| Chapter 2. Acquiring Geronimo & Quick Start [DRAFT (1.0)] | ||
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 | Part I. Getting Started |  |
| Chapter 2. Acquiring Geronimo & Quick Start [DRAFT (1.0)] | ||
|---|---|---|
| | Part I. Getting Started | |
Table of Contents
Geronimo can be freely downloaded and installed from the project home page on the Internet. This chapter discusses the download process, and then takes a quick tour of installing and starting Geronimo, connecting to the management console, deploying a database connection pool, setting up a security realm, and deploying an application.
Geronimo releases are available from the Geronimo web site:
http://geronimo.apache.org/downloads.html
There are three types of downloads available for each release:
Binary Release -- a .tar.gz or .zip package that can be unpacked to produce a working Geronimo installation, ready to run with default settings. Generally the .tar.gz packages are best suited for Mac or UNIX platforms, while the .zip packages are best suited for Windows platforms.
Installer Package -- an executable JAR. When run, it produces a Wizard-style installer interface, offering configuration options such as the network ports to use, the default administrator username and password, etc. Currently this is the most convenient way to change the administration account and network ports Geronimo listens on at installation time. The installer package can also be used to perform automated installations.
Source Code -- a .tar.gz or .zip package with the source code for Geronimo (and in some cases, closely related projects such as OpenEJB). The Geronimo release can be rebuilt completely from the provided source code, though the build scripts require a Maven installation and a Java 1.4.2 development kit.
The binary release is offered as two distinct configurations, and the same options are available through the installer. The option is related to the web container used by Geronimo
Jetty Web Container
Tomcat Web Container
The Geronimo team fully supports both web containers, and does not have a preference for one or the other. We have people working hard to ensure that both are well-integrated into Geronimo. For straight J2EE applications, either container will work well. Some more advanced configurations do expose differences between the two web containers -- one area of note being how they handle virtual hosting. And some developers may have an existing preference. In any case, Geronimo uses a standard web deployment plan for both containers, and minimizes any differences visible to applications and developers.
![[Note]](images/note.png) | Note |
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To further clarify on Virtual Hosts, Tomcat configures each host separately with listen addresses, etc. and then can assign web applications to hosts in the deployment plan for an application. Jetty simple allows the developer to specify a list of virtual hosts in the deployment plan for an application. | |
In order to get a version of Geronimo more current that the latest release, the source code can be checked out from Subversion, the version-control system used for Geronimo. Then the Geronimo build scripts can be used to create a custom distribution of Geronimo, using the same procedure as to build from an official source code release. The tools required to check out and build Geronimo include:
A Java Development Kit, version 1.4.2
Apache Maven 1.x, in order to download dependencies and build Geronimo
A Subversion 1.x client, in order to check out the source code
The source code can be checked with a command like this:
svn co https://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/geronimo/trunk geronimo
This will create a new directory called geronimo containing the Geronimo source code. From there, you can run various Maven commands to download dependencies, build Geronimo and the projects it requires, run tests, etc. This process is documented in greater detail on the Geronimo Wiki (http://wiki.apache.org/geronimo/Building).
Once Geronimo has been built from source, the directories under geronimo/modules/assemblies/ contain the same files that would ordinarily be present in the various release options (typically under a target/geronimo-version/ subdirectory). That directory can be copied elsewhere and generally treated similarly to a release.
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| 1.5. Related Projects |  | 2.2. Geronimo Quick Start |