BlackBerry development using IntelliJ IDEA 7.0?

Question

I know RIM has their own IDE (BlackBerry JDE) for building BlackBerry apps, but does anyone know how to configure IntelliJ IDEA to build/debug BlackBerry apps?

Answer 1

Not really an answer, but more asking for clarification what is different for Blackberry dev versus other J2ME devices...

I see its a MIDP J2ME device, and so the standard Intellij J2ME support would seem to give most of what is needed.

I guess the emulator side of things might be different... but maybe you can call the jde emulator from IDEA...

Regards, Chris

Answer 2

Not sure if this will help but here are instructions for setting up Eclipse for blackberry development.

Maybe you can use that information to figure out what changes to need to make in IDEA.

Answer 3

RIM's compiler (the one that builds the COD files) can be easily run from the command line. All you need to do is create a corresponding build step in IDEA.

Also, to make your life easier when editing the code, you may want to add the net_rim_api.jar (the one that comes with RIM JDE) to the JAR files used by your IDEA project.

As for the debugger, RIM's debugger was supposed to support the standard Java debugger interface. I don't remember what the minimum version of JDE is required for that.

Answer 4

RE: Chris' question about what is different... Blackberry applications can be standard MIDP apps or CLDC apps that make use of the Blackberry specific APIs. Most developers tend to take the latter approach, and then using Blackberry's tools is required - especially if you are using some of their secured APIs and have to sign your deployment files for them to run on the devices.

A potential answer to the original question would be to use the Blackberry ANT tools to create an ANT script for building the application and reference that from IntelliJ IDEA. Of course, that's only half the battle and to run/debug the application you'll need to connect the debugger to IDEA as noted by Alexander above. Alternatively, you could code in IDEA and run/debug in the JDE, but that seems less than ideal, to say the least.

I use Eclipse with the Blackberry plugin. Also not ideal, since you are forced to use an old (and buggy) version of Eclipse, but at least I'm in one IDE and can step through code running in a simulator.

Blackberry JDE integration would be a great IntelliJ plugin project.

Answer 5

Its very easy to integrate IntelliJ with Blackberry development given the above suggestion (using the bb ant tasks), but I've yet to successfully debug the simulator through IntelliJ. It should work, but it doesn't.

Thus, the 'integration' is incomplete.

Answer 6

I've been using IntelliJ to develop Blackberry apps...sort of. IntelliJ is really good at indexing code, you just need to point it in the right direction. It's editing abilities are way beyond the JDE and in my opinion it is much more flexible and user friendly than Eclipse (even though RIM has an Eclipse plug-in).

I say sort of though as I just code in IntelliJ and currently still compile and debug through the JDE. Hoping for better integration on that front with IntelliJ down the line, but it is an acceptable working environment for now.