Java Editor

[fernie255]

Hi,
I'm currently using vi for developing in java but like the added functionality of Jcreater(for example).  Does anyone know of any editor that does syntax highlighting, class browsing and has vi-style editing?

[leknor]

vim can do syntax coloring, auto indenting, and is very vi-like. I used to use it exclusivly but I've gotten old and lazy and now find NetBeans a pleasant enviroment for my dev work, others like Eclipse, and then there are the very passionate few that swear by IDEA. I plan to give IDEA a second chance when I start my next project and will find out if their passion is warranted or just inflated to fill that $400 void in their pockets.

[Herkules]

Hi,
I'm currently using vi for developing in java but like the added functionality of Jcreater(for example).  Does anyone know of any editor that does syntax highlighting, class browsing and has vi-style editing?

vi, wow - real hard core! They are still amongst us!

TBH, I'm not aware of any IDE that can do vi-style editing.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[cfmdobbie]

Vim is excellent - I use it just about exclusively.  

I had a lot of success in the past getting jVi to embed within JBuilder, but that was a while ago.  Definitely worked with JBuilder 3.0-3.5 or so.

Eclipse can be pretty easily set up to launch Vim when editing a file is required - you get the benefits of an IDE but the keybindings of Vi/Vim.

Visual SlickEdit currently has support for Vi keybindings, and they're working on Vim.  Try the 30-day evaluation, but be warned it's quite an expensive piece of software.  Bloody good though!

[Herkules]

Ah, this remembers me of the fact that also Together allows to use external editors!

Quite a high price for a vi launcher though....

[lefty]

If one happened to be on Kazaa sometime around 9PM EST tonight, and happened to do a search for "VisualSlickEdit" they might happen to find someone sharing a full version, maybe....

[Orangy Tang]

On a related note, anyone have any good advice regarding IDE's with intergrated debuggers? While JCreator has served me well for something lightweight and free, debugging via system.out has become a serious pain since i've experienced Visual C++'s intergrated debugger...

[leknor]

On a related note, anyone have any good advice regarding IDE's with intergrated debuggers?

I've yet to find a debugger that I thought had a good GUI. I feel like I need 2 more monitors to show all the info I want to see at once. Anyway, I use NetBeans which I find in world of "IDE" has a rather big "I".

[morbo]

Eclipse has a nice debugger. Easy to use, plus lots of features I haven't seen in other debuggers. Very configurable views, too.

[javapunk]

I use eclipse for all the work I do...
It's free and easy to get up and running (Same cannot be said about net beans...)

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[leknor]

NetBean is free and it's not hard to setup. What is different is that it's very Java centric. My friends complain that setting up the directories was confusing. The mount point system is more like the classpath. When you mount things you effectivly add that to the classpath. This abstraction is actually quite cool once you've worked with it for a while.

[Herkules]

...drifting gently away from the 'vi' topic....

NetBeans rulez, BTW  

[fernie255]

Thanks all for the responses.  They a great help.  I've tried vim but just couldn't get used to the u/ctrl-r for undo/redo so I'll stick to vi for now.  But I will look into the mentioned IDE's that are able to launch an external editor.

[cfmdobbie]

What keypresses do you prefer to use for undo/redo?

[swpalmer]

I want to use Visual SourceSafe with my IDE (currently Eclipse)..

It looks like there is a VSS plugin for eclipse, and it appears that NetBeans has some mehtod of accessing VSS as well.

What I want to know is, when preforming automatic refactorings, such as chaning the package that a class is in, or the name of a class,  does the IDE automatically handle moving/renaming the file in the version control database?

Without handling the file moves (does CVS handle moving a file like that anyway?) and renames, that wonderfully useful automated refactoring would become a major pain!  You woul haveot manually do all sorts of juggling in your version control system before you could check in... It would be worse than having to do all the refactoring by hand.

Please tell me that there are tools out there that can talk to VSS, that do refactoring and are smart enough to handle this situation.
I will be setting up a development system tomorrow.. and if I have to choose a particular IDE to get this functionality I would appreciate being saved some grief of making the 'wrong' choice

thanks!

[Herkules]

What keypresses do you prefer to use for undo/redo?

Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Y

[Herkules]

What I want to know is, when preforming automatic refactorings, such as chaning the package that a class is in, or the name of a class,  does the IDE automatically handle moving/renaming the file in the version control database?

NetBeans does support VSS (don't know how good), but does not track class renamings to the VCS.
I use RefactorIt for refactorings, which does not touch CVS neither.

Together supports refactorings downto the VCS and claims to support Microsoft SCC Interface Integrations. Never tried and never trusted it anyway....

[leknor]

I want to use Visual SourceSafe with my IDE (currently Eclipse)..

I can't speak for Eclipse.

NetBeans claims to have support but I didn't see a menu item for it and couldn't find a module to support VSS.

IntelliJ IDEA claims to have support but I haven't used it.

[Herkules]

IntelliJ IDEA claims to have support.

IDEA supports refactorings in CVS. I asked a collegue.
So at least it is not unlikely that it does so for VSS.

[cfmdobbie]

Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-Y

Fernie, if you want these for example, create a .vimrc (UNIX) or an _vimrc (Windows) in your home directory, and add the following to it:

1   2   3   4   5   6   7

" CTRL-Z is Undo; not in cmdline though noremap <C-Z> u inoremap <C-Z> <C-O>u " CTRL-Y is Redo (although not repeat); not in cmdline though noremap <C-Y> <C-R> inoremap <C-Y> <C-O><C-R>

If under Windows I believe the default installation will cause Vim to set these keypresses anyway?  Repost if you have any problems, or you're after different undo/redo keys!

[Herkules]

Just received the news that next release of RefactorIt (1.2.2) will support refactorings under version control with CVS and VSS.

http://www.refactorit.com

Integrates well with NetBeans, BTW....

[swpalmer]

just got Eclipse set up at work with the VSS plug in.. it seems to work ok for the most part.  I haven't tested the refactoring yet to see if it is smart, but from looking at the readme it seems that eclipse does have hooks to the source control system for moves and renames.. so it just may work well.

One irritating thing though is that it doesn't automatically ask to check out the file if you attempt to edit it.  Does anyone happen to know if Eclipse can be configured to do so?

BTW. Does RefactorIt have a free version? (not a time limited trial)

[Herkules]

Does RefactorIt have a free version? (not a time limited trial)

They have a FREE license for OpenSource projects. And decent prices for the rest, I think.

[leknor]

NetBeans claims to have support but I didn't see a menu item for it and couldn't find a module to support VSS.

I happened across VSS support in the NetBeans Options menu. It can be found at: Options > System > Modules > Version Control > VSS

[Orangy Tang]

Hmm, just been tinkering with Eclipse over the last hour or so, and i'm still very undecided. Debugger looks very nice, as does the seperate 'perspectives' and the views can be nicely rearranged to say the least.

However, i can't for the life of me figure out how to do (or how to enable) simple things   Where on earth is the compiler output for a start? And is there an option to let me select an entire line by clicking on the line number/margin? I've searched the help files and config in vain.. If anyone can point out where i'm going awry i'd appreciate it.

And it doesnt seem to have hotkeys for anything useful, or let me edit the toolbar. *sigh* looks like unless i'm very much mistaken i'll be going back to JCreator, where its nice and streamlined in such areas.

[markuskidd]

Where on earth is the compiler output for a start?

Depends on the perspective. You're looking for the Tasks view though.

And is there an option to let me select an entire line by clicking on the line number/margin? I've searched the help files and config in vain.. If anyone can point out where i'm going awry i'd appreciate it.

Pretty sure you can do this, not sure how though.

And it doesnt seem to have hotkeys for anything useful, or let me edit the toolbar.

Try right-clicking on the toolbar

Here's the perspective i put together for most of my work: http://www.stardart.net/Images/workshop.png

[Orangy Tang]

Odd, i'm sure i had the tasks window open when i did a build at some point, and yet i didnt see anything.

And right clicking didn't give me any useful options at all. Its almost as if getting hotkeys for compile/run and a corresponding button is being made as difficult as possible...  

[markuskidd]

Maybe you didn't have any compiler output?
Eclipse uses incremental compiling, and therefore when and what you get is a bit different than with JCreator. This can be customized in your Java preferences.

When you right-click on the toolbar, you should get an option to "Customize Perspective" which will allow you to customize it.

As far as hotkeys, there is a help topic called "Keyboard shortcuts for the Workbench, Java development tools, and the debugger" in the workbench user guide. You can get to this by searching help for "Key."

[macross]

IDEA

I can say it is the best IDE for Java!
And I tried a lot of them.

[leknor]

For those that can't get enough of NetBeans versus IDEA: http://www.netbeans.org/servlets/BrowseList?listName=nbusers&by=thread&from=15814&JServSessionIdservlets=q4fkxlfkx2