I'll take that as a no then, so here's a little more detail.
I've tried running Atomikos 3.8, both spring configured and configured inside Tomcat - as they tell you to do in the setup instructions.
I bound it to the spring jta transaction manager - with a bean name of transactionManager (again as it tells you to do in the manual)
It seems to start up ok in both cases - when both spring and tomcat configured.
The problem with GemFire superficially appears to be this:
[info 2013/02/27 10:56:01.006 EST <localhost-startStop-1> tid=0x15] JNDIInvoker::mapTransactions::NamingException while binding TransactionManager/UserTransaction to GemFire JNDI Tree I see the transaction start, fail and rollback with an error. 2013-02-27 11:03:42,978 113617 [Function Execution Processor1] DEBUG com.atomikos.icatch.imp.CompositeTransactionImp ( Slf4jLogger.java:33) - Ignoring error during event callback java.lang.IllegalStateException: Transaction no longer active
What I don't see is GemFire participating.
Worse I get a partial rollback (and I'm updating a single object here)
I'm hoping this extra info will spark some recognition because I've spent a day and change on it and I'm pretty much stumped at this point...