What is GlassFish?

| programming | java |

I jumped down another rabbit hole trying to figure out how to get started with java ee without using an ide. Although IDE’s are very handy when it comes to Java development, they also are sometimes a crutch. For instance, if you want to transition to CI, do you actually know what commands the IDE runs when you right click and run tests?

First, I have no idea what Java EE actually is. There is something called GlassFish, which is an open source Java EE “reference implementation”. It also the same thing that is installed when you go to the main Java EE website.

Java EE does not support the latest Java JDK 1.9. On my Mac I had a tough time trying to get two versions of Java to run at the same time.

I think 99.9% of all tutorials about getting started with Java EE include using Netbeans or Eclipse. I wanted to write one that used the CLI. This involves using maven.

Maven has a concept called “archetypes” which creates the necessary directory structure for a new Java project. The main problem is that I could not find a bare bones archetype definition.

At the end of the day, I dug deep into the rabbit hole and came up empty. I will figure this out at some point and write a blog post about it.

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Go Read a Book

There's a lot of shitty news happening lately, and I've been having trouble holding space for it all.

via flower.codes January 24, 2026

ROSCon Korea 2026 Review

After attending my first ever ROSCon in Singapore 3 months ago, I had a chance to participate in the first ever regional ROSCon in (South) Korea! Physical AI is here I had an interesting discussion with a team lead at ROBOTIS, a major Robotics company , o…

via Junwoo Hwang January 24, 2026

[RIDGELINE] Eras

Ridgeline subscribers — I like “eras.” That is, named chunks of time. Japanese history tends to periodicize based on locus of power. The Tokugawa Shogunate reigned for hundreds of years, and so: Edo, where the power was, becomes the period (a big sweeping o…

via Craig Mod — Writer + Photographer January 24, 2026

Generated by openring