Getting Started with JRuby support in NetBeans and Solaris Express Developer Edition 01/08

For the most part JRuby support in NetBeans Just Works on Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) 01/08.

The one hitch is that NetBeans is installed automatically as part of SXDE, and this means it is installed as root. This also means that the gem repository that is included with NetBeans is writeable only by root.

Unless you'd like to run as root (not recommended), you need to fix the permissions on the gem repository that comes with NetBeans. Otherwise you won't be able to install or modify any Ruby gems.

To fix this is fairly simple:

$ su root
Password:
# chmod -R a+w /opt/netbeans-6.0/ruby1/jruby-1.0.2/lib/ruby/gems

Once you have done this, you should be good to go. The first time you create a Ruby project in NetBeans, choose JRuby as your Ruby interpreter, and you're off.

You'll probably also want to start up MySQL or start up PostgreSQL

If you're using PostgreSQL, there are a couple of other steps you need to do, described here.