VMware Cloud Foundry Micro PaaS Adds Java Debugging

The VMware Cloud Foundry team has released a new edition of Micro Cloud Foundry, which updates all the cloud languages and frameworks involved in the single-PC platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solution, streamlines offline support and, probably most notably, adds Java debugging features.

As a quick refresher, Micro Cloud Foundry is a tool for developers that runs a complete Cloud Foundry PaaS environment within a virtual machine on a single computer. Whatever changes you make on the microscale are guaranteed to work on a larger-scale Cloud Foundry deployment, but with the convenience of not having to do all your coding in the public cloud.

The new version — 1.2, to be more exact– brings the kind of Java debugger that developers have been using locally for ages now. “The user can set break points in the source code, suspend and resume running applications, view the application stack and perform code stepping operations,” so says the Cloud Foundry blog entry. Debugging occurs either via the command line or by way of the integrated SpringSource Tool Suite (STS).

As for the new runtimes: It brings Java 6, Ruby 1.8, Ruby 1.9, Node.js .4 and the newly available Node.js .6 runtimes up to parity with the CloudFoundry.com public service, while doing the same for the MongoDB, MySQL, Postgresql, RabbitMQ and Redis services. That blog entry has more technical detail for those so minded.

Cloud Foundry’s platform agnosticism and openness has won it a fair share of fans in the cloud ISV world. I can’t really see anybody being unhappy with what VMware’s team has brought to the table this time around.