Right now Metro provides official off-line installation scripts for GlassFish v2 and Tomcat as part of the standalone Metro bundle. If you want to use latest Metro with GlassFish v3, you should update Metro installation via GlassFish v3 Update Center.

While updating Metro installation on GlassFish v3 via Update Center is really strongly encouraged and preferred way for most Metro users, there are cases when it would be really good to be able to update Metro on GlassFish v3 using an off-line installer. Off-line installer is especially helpful when trying to install Metro built from sources or trying to test latest nightly build of Metro that may not be available through the GlassFish v3 Update Center yet.

Unfortunately, there was no such installer available in the Metro bundle… until now. I have just added a first experimental version of such installer to the Metro workspace and it should be available for use with the Metro v2.0 nightly build tomorrow. Here’s how to invoke the installer from the Bash command line, once you download and unpack the Metro bundle:

cd <metro-bundle-dir>
export AS_HOME=<gfv3-install-dir>/glassfish
ant -f metro-on-glassfish-v3.xml install

Simple, isn’t it? For more information on the Ant targets available in the script file, just type

ant -f metro-on-glassfish-v3.xml help

I hope you will enjoy this small improvement, yet remember – this is an experimental installer, use it at your own risk. And don’t forget to send me any issues you may encounter with the installer!