Container Tech Added to Red Hat App Kit
The third installment of a batch of open source software from Red Hat includes development tools, dynamic languages, and databases along with new container technology.
Red Hat stressed in releasing Software Collections 1.2 that the toolset is on a "separate lifecycle" from its better-known Red Hat Enterprise Linux server and workstation distribution. That means the software toolkit is updated more frequently as the pace of application deployment speeds up and as more applications run in the cloud.
Along with open developer tools like the GCC, Git, and a Java automation tool called Maven, Red Hat announced it is moving to fold emerging Docker container technology into its developer toolsets with the addition of Dockerfiles, which is designed to create and deploy container-based applications.
Version 3 of the Red Hat Developer Toolset aims to bridge the gap between fast application development and production stability, Red Hat said. One applications development tool available with both the software toolkit and RHEL 7 is the Java integrated development environment, Eclipse IDE.
The toolset also includes GCC 4.9, a set of compilers that are popular on the Linux operating system. The current version was released this summer. Also included is the latest version of ltrace, a library call tracing tool.
Apache Maven 3.0 is a software project management tool used to automate Java project builds. It also places reporting and documentation in a central repository. Maven tells developers how software is built and describes associated dependencies.
Meanwhile, Red Hat said it would separate the latest version of Git from its Developer Toolset, a move that would allow developers to access and install the distributed revision control tool separate from the Red Hat toolset.
Also included in the development tool bundle are: DevAssistant 0.9.1, a tool for creating development environments and publishing code; the Nginx web server and proxy server; and the latest "stable" versions of the Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP and Perl dynamic languages.
Open source databases included in the software bundle include MariaDB, MongoDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL, an object relational database management system.
The latest installment that also includes Dockerfiles, reflecting Red Hat's growing commitment to container technology in general and Docker containers specifically. While the software collection targets application development and deployment "into production across the open hybrid cloud," Jim Totten, general manager of Red Hat's Platforms Business Unit, stressed in a statement, it also addresses "the promise of containerized application development."
Red Hat's open source container initiative called Project Atomic seeks to develop a lightweight RHEL host to deliver applications as Docker containers. Red Hat and Cisco announced in September they would partner to speed development of Linux application containers.
A beta version of the software development toolkit was released in September. Red Hat Software Collections 1.2 is now generally available for use with RHEL 6 and 7. RHEL 7 was released in June. The open source specialist added that it would support the development tools for three years.
Along with RHEL applications, Red Hat said the toolkit cloud also be used for application development on its OpenShift platform-as-a-service.
