Re: Setting up a Java development environment the debian way.

[Simon Kitching <skitching@apache.org>]

On Wed, 2005-06-22 at 10:17 +0100, Alan Chandler wrote:
> Ms Linuz writes: 
> 
> > Alan Chandler wrote:
> ...
> >>So my questions are: 
> >>
> >>1) What tools do I need to develop the application.   This includes code 
> >>editiing, build environment, unit testing, I tried to setup eclipse on my 
> >>workstation but there are unsatisfied dependencies (java runtime?). 
> >>
> >>   
> >>
> > 
> > Netbeans : http://www.netbeans.org
> > the best java ide i see so far
> ...
> >>Obviously all this from standard debian packages if that is possible
> 
> Netbeans is not a debian package.  It might be interesting to look at it, 
> but what is the debian way? 

Personally I think you're buying yourself a world of pain if you try to
do servlet/ejb/etc java development using the free java tools. They are
definitely getting better and are useable for some tasks but aren't
completely there yet.

This doc was updated 3 june 2005 and so is presumably up with the latest
developments:
  http://www.nl.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-java-faq/
(I just found this via google).

http://java.debian.net is also useful (I found this in the faq).

I do a lot of java development on Debian, and simply download Sun's
standard java for Linux and a standard Eclipse build and work from
there. They just need to be untarred, and $PATH set appropriately. Of
course junit is also very important, and possibly ant.

I am aware that Fedora ships with a version of Eclipse compiled via gcj
which is cool. But I am not aware of a debian package for eclipse. And
anyway Eclipse 3.1 is coming out soon with some very useful new features
for jsp/j2ee development. 

If I was writing a GUI app for linux I might be tempted to try java +
the gtk java bindings + gcj to generate a native binary from java
source. But not for servlet development.

If you need more info I suggest you ask on the debian-java mail list
instead of here.

Regards,

Simon