WebSphere 8.5 Liberty Profile is a small, fast, agile WebSphere runtime that you – developers – can use to develop, test or embed in your applications.  The runtime is provided free of charge from IBM.  Like every Java EE Profile, it implements a subset of the Java EE Specification, while ensuring 100% “upwards” fidelity to the full WebSphere Application Server.

On my i7 – quad core – machine, WAS Liberty starts in less than 1 sec.  With not application deployed.

Installing the runtime is as easy as unzipping a file on your drive, here are the steps

1. download from wasdev.net (46 Mb only)
2. unzip

   java -jar wlp-developers-8.5.0.0.jar

   After displaying and approving the distribution license, you will be ready for the next step

3. Optional : create a server instance (an instance “defaultServer” is created for you automatically, this step is optional)

   # cd wlp
   # chmod u+x bin/server
   # ./bin/server create MyInstance
   Server MyInstance created.

4. start it

   # ./bin/server start MyInstance

   Or just this line to start the default instance

   #./bin/server start

   Server MyInstance started with process ID 59946.

Now that you have the runtime, you are ready to install the tooling to manipulate it from Eclipse.

1.  Start Eclipse (Indigo or Juno)
2. Open Eclipse MarketPlace
   
3. Search for “liberty” and click on “Install”
   
4. In the “Eclipse” menu, click on “Preferences”
5. In the “Preferences” pane, select “Server”, then “Runtime Environment” and click on “Add”
   
6. Select “WebSphere Application 8.5 Liberty Profile”
   
7. Give the name you want, point to your Installation directory (see bullet 2 in the installation instructions above) and click “Finish”
   
8. Switch to the “Server” window in the “Java EE” perspective
9. Right-click – New -> Server, choose your newly created runtime instance
   
10. Don’t leave the “Server” window, right click on the server name and choose “Start”
    

The “Console” window should automatically open, and within a few seconds, you should see the following line to appear :

Launching default (wlp-1.0.0.20120428-1251/websphere-kernel_1.0.0) on Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM, version 1.7.0_07-b10 (en_US)
[AUDIT   ] CWWKE0001I: The server default has been launched.
[AUDIT   ] CWWKZ0058I: Monitoring dropins for applications. 
[AUDIT   ] CWWKF0011I: The server default is ready to run a smarter planet.

You have now a fully functional WebSphere Liberty profile installed and the corresponding tooling in Eclipse.  The tooling allows you to stop/start the application server, but also to manage its configuration and, obviously, to deploy applications on it.

In the next blog entry, I will show you how to deploy a REST based web service on Liberty

Enjoy !