GRAILS and Groovy tip

If you try out groovy Grails on Windows as an open-source web application framework, I suggest you install it as a sub-directory of your Groovy directory.
You will want to knwo that your groovy is running fine: in my case I added

set CLASSPATH=I:\groovy-1.0\groovy-1.0.jar;%CLASSPATH%

to my groovy-1.0\bin\groovyConsole.bat I also have three ENV variables defined: GROOVY_HOME, GROOVY_JAR and GRAILS_HOME and both HOME var's are in my path with \bin appended to them.

With that done, you can go into the Grails bin and edit the

grails.bat

I think that there is no point avoiding at least this much:

set CLASSPATH=

because even with my own classpath tool it is just too much grief. Grails does not need your classpath but having one is a problem. The top of my grails.bat now reads

REM set groovy_home=I:\groovy-1.0
REM set GRAILS_HOME=%GROOVY_HOME%\grails-0.5.6
REM set path=%groovy_home%\bin;%grails_home%\bin;%PATH%
REM set GROOVY_JAR=groovy-1.0.jar
set classpath=

To test that things are running start in the grails\bin with

grails help

which should run error-free and list the grails commands. From there you should be OK following the Grails Quick Start steps. Until help comes up error-free, you have an issue.

One last tip: Grails will create your web app root directory in the directory you are in at the time you execute

grails create-app

which in my case is running

I:\groovy-1.0\grails-0.5.6\scripts\CreateApp.groovy

so you do not want to be in .\grails\bin on your command line. If you have not installed the Microsoft Power Toy Open Command Window which launches CMD.exe from any folder in the file explorer, you will want to do so ... whether you are using Grails or Rails without an IDE.