macOS eclipse programming through Virtual Machine with Windows

[xpan]

Hi,

I am seriously thinking that it is high time I got an iMac. However, I am a bit skeptical. This is what I *have* to do with my mac.

During the next year I will have to participate in a big project which includes building a complex web-based application with JSP. I know eclipse (my favorite) runs on a Mac, this is good news!

The bad news is that the server side needs a special application which performs mathematical calculations and it only runs on windows/linux machine (http://www.lindo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=35&Itemid=20). This works in conjunction with the servlets on the server side.

This is what I am supposed to if I end up buying an iMac.

Run a Virtual Machine with Windows XP. On the VM install the Mathematical Application along with the Servlet Container (i.e. Tomcat). On my iMac run Eclipse and code JSPs and Servlet files. These files have to copied immediately (in some way) to the Servlet container which runs on the Virtual Machine. This must be as easy as possible.

At the same time I will have to test the application. This means that when I point my browser (i.e. Safari) to http://localhost:8085/myApp/index.jsp my iMac should be able to redirect it to the Servlet container on the Virtual Machine.

Has anyone tried this? Is it easy? I am sorry for the long post.

Chris

 

[Woei]

During the next year I will have to participate in a big project which includes building a complex web-based application with JSP. I know eclipse (my favorite) runs on a Mac, this is good news!

The bad news is that the server side needs a special application which performs mathematical calculations and it only runs on windows/linux machine (http://www.lindo.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=35&Itemid=20). This works in conjunction with the servlets on the server side.

This is what I am supposed to if I end up buying an iMac.

Run a Virtual Machine with Windows XP. On the VM install the Mathematical Application along with the Servlet Container (i.e. Tomcat). On my iMac run Eclipse and code JSPs and Servlet files. These files have to copied immediately (in some way) to the Servlet container which runs on the Virtual Machine. This must be as easy as possible.

At the same time I will have to test the application. This means that when I point my browser (i.e. Safari) to http://localhost:8085/myApp/index.jsp my iMac should be able to redirect it to the Servlet container on the Virtual Machine.

Has anyone tried this? Is it easy? I am sorry for the long post.

Chris

Sure thing. I've done something similar a few years back. An iMac G5 running NetBeans and a JBoss app server on a linux machine. The class files (or .war/.ear files) were deployed over a samba share from the iMac to the linux machine. App server maintenance was performed over an ssh window to the linux machine. You could also use an Ant task to deploy your dist files to the virtual machine, with the click of a button or a keyboard shortcut.

And it doesn't really matter if your windows machine is virtualized or not. Tools like VMWare Fusion can bridge the network connection so that a virtual machine has access to the network and can be accessed from the network just like a physical machine.

À propos, the Galileo release of Eclipse (3.5) finally has decent Cocoa bindings and the mac is now far from the second class citizen in SWT like it was a few years ago.

 

[rrpalma]

Hello Chris,

Yes, what you want to do is possible, and I do it all the time, in a slightly different way from what Woei suggested.

I have Eclipse running on Mac OS X, and then IBM WebSphere Appserver in a Linux VM running within VMWare Fusion (with a fixed IP address, no IP NATting).

I have Maven deploy through FTP to the Appserver -- some glue scripts in the middle.