IntelliJ IDEA 9 for BlackBerry Programming

Question

I'm never done any mobile development before, but I'm interested in trying my hand at developing some simple applications for BlackBerry's.

I would like to use IntelliJ IDEA to develop the applications. I've tried Googling for a way to set this up, but all I can come up with is people saying that they have to use RIM's JDE for compiling and simulation. I'm fine with this, I would just like to know how to get IntelliJ IDEA set up for coding the applications.

For example, whether I should set up the project as Java Module or a J2ME module, which SDK I should point the project at (if that's necessary?), which libraries to add to the project to get code completion, etc...

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

I use IDEA for BlackBerry development - I think mostly because I've use it for so many years I'm not quite ready to switch over to Eclipse yet. :)

Like you mentioned, it only serves as an editor - any compiling, simulators, loading to devices, etc. still needs to be done from the command line (I use ant tasks for compiling and loading to devices and the JDE for compiling and running in simulators).

For IDEA, use the following project settings:

• regular Java project (not J2ME)
• for the project JDK select "No JDK"
• for language level select "1.3"
• create a library pointing to the net_rim_api.jar file
• add that library as a dependency for your project
• if you are using resources in your project (.rrc and .rrh files), you'll need to add the JAR file that the JDE generates to your IDEA library

That should do it. Since there isn't a JDK defined for the project, you don't have to worry about IDEA letting you use classes such as HashMap which don't exist in the RIM APIs, but it will still have classes like String in the net_rim_api.jar.