Thanks, it looks like your suspicion is correct. Here is what I have learned so far:
The embedded Server class seems to load all of the available PlatformMain service implementations via the ServiceLoader class. All of the available PlatformMain classes extend the AbstractMain class. When the AbstractMain constructor is invoked it tries to find the location of the main glassfish jar file as a kind of anchor point (for config files etc it seems). AbstractMain uses the "com.sun.enterprise.module.bootstrap.Which" class to try to find this jar. Incidentally the Which class is nowhere to be found in the glassfish repository so I'm not sure where it comes from.
It isn't clear to me why locating the glassfish jar file should be necessary in the case of the embedded server. Should this be considered a bug? I don't really have the knowledge to resolve this issue myself but if some glassfish expert out there gave me guidance on the significance of the findBootstrapFile and what it should return in the case of embedded deployment I would be willing to spend some time trying to fix it (assuming it is a bug).
Thanks
Keith
[Message sent by forum member 'keithshep' (keithshep_at_gmail.com)]
http://forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=385037