What does your Java development environment consist of?

Question

I am looking to start fiddling around with Java development in my free time (professionally a .NET developer) and I am curious as to what the community feels is their preferred development environment.

Items that could be listed:

• IDE
• Plugins
• Tools
• Utilities
• Source/Version Control
• Libraries
• Books
• Blogs
• Anything else you feel makes your time developing in Java easier/more efficient/more enjoyable

Although it would be nice to potentially tailor any lists towards hobby development (no expensive enterprise tools), I don't think anything should necessarily be left off the list if you feel it is important to your development.

Answer 1

• gvim
• ctags
• make
• find/xargs/grep
• A web browser with a tab open on the API docs and another tab open to the StackOverflow
• An iPod filled with tunes to drown out the distractions around me.

Bonus for working at home:

• A dog in my lap

Answer 2

This is what I use:

• IDE: NetBeans ( although I sometimes use Eclipse for some stuff)
• VCS: Mercurial (NetBeans can work with Mercurial out of the box)
• Java Help: http://forums.sun.com/index.jspa and stackoverflow.com
• Java platform : OpenJDK6
• API reference : http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/
• Book: Head first Java (to learn java, not very good for reference)
• OS: Ubuntu Linux

Answer 3

• MyEclipse + ClearCase Plugin
• ClearCase (any source control is fine; I'd use SVN for a hobby project)
• Firefox + many shortcuts to JavaDoc for JDK and libraries
• Ant for building
• log4J for logging
• CruiseControl for Continuous Integration
• cygwin (since my development is on Windows) so I have access to find and grep -R and other UNIX tools
• WinXP Pro (if I were doing hobby development it would be under Linux)
• findbugs for static analysis
• checkstyle for style and code sanity checking
• JUnit for unit testing
• iBatis (and old version) for database access
• MySQL for a database

Answer 4

• IDE - Netbeans (also use the Profiler in Netbeans)
• Building - Ant 1.7
• Lint - PMD, Checkstyle, Findbugs
• Unit testing - JUnit 4.x
• Code Coverage - cobertura
• Version Control - subversion and svnkit for doing some svn stuff in ant
• Build server - Bamboo
• Bug tracking - JIRA
• XML Parsing - XML Beans
• Database integration - JPA (through NetBeans 'cause I am lazy :-)
• Books - Effective Java + anything else on the particular topic I am working on (right now the JVM spec)

Answer 5

• Netbeans
• Ant
• subversion
• Junit 4
• Java Api docs
• Stack Overflow of course

Answer 6

IDE: Eclipse Ganymede (Ant & JUnit built in)
JDK: The latest v6 from Sun
Platform: SQL Server, Apache Tomcat, Hudson
Plugins: Sysdeo (Tomcat), Genady.net (RMI), Jupiter (Code Review), Mat (memory issue tracking)
Libraries: JIDE & Synthetica (GUI stuff), jTDS (SQL Server) & a million others.
Source: CVS
Books & Blogs: Whatever I can lay my hands on. Information junkie, me

Answer 7

• MyEclipse - lots of plugins, the most important of them are Spring IDE, FileSync and Subversive.
• Maven for building
• Archiva as proxy for Maven artifacts, and also to deploy my own artifacts
• Hudson for continous integration
• Subversion for source control
• MediaWiki for archiving all sorts of knowledge
• Libraries I use in every project: Apache Commons Utilities, Google Collections and JUnit
• Spring, Hibernate and MySQL for many projects
• MySQL GUI Tools
• JBoss for large-scale testing, Jetty for small jobs
• Books: Effective Java, Spring in Action

Answer 8

MacBook (environment) Eclipse (IDE) Junit 4 (test driven) Ant (continuous build Subversion (version management) Tomcat (for J2EE application tests) 3rd party libraries as needed for project

Answer 9

My setup is simple:

• NetBeans
• Subversion

As for books, Joshua Bloch's Effective Java is a must, once you've got over the basics.

Answer 10

For all projects:

• Apache Ant (augmented by my own reusable collection of macros and custom tasks).
• IntelliJ IDEA (so good I bought a personal licence so I can use it at home)
• Bash (via Cygwin if on Windows)
• TestNG + ReportNG
• Cobertura
• Subversion
• Hudson

As needed:

• JProfiler (or, for personal projects, the free NetBeans profiler)
• FindBugs
• Checkstyle
• FEST Swing

Books: Effective Java and perhaps Java Concurrency in Practice.

Libraries vary from project to project. I try to avoid introducing dependencies unless absolutely required, so I don't have any that I use all the time.

Answer 11

My list:

• IDE: Eclipse Ganymede
• Plugins: SQLExplorer, SUBCLIPSE
• Tools: jconsole
• Utilities: Mac OS's command line
• Source/Version Control: svn
• Libraries: as few as possible
• Books: www.google.com, Thinking in Java
• Blogs: none
• Anything else: stay away from Java EE as far as possible (got to do it sometimes because of customer's requirements though, in which case I use JBoss)

Answer 12

Here's mine:

1. IDE: IntelliJ 8.1. Best IDE there is. Bought a personal license; it's worth it.
2. Spring 2.5
3. Subversion
4. JUnit or TestNG
5. Tomcat or WebLogic for Java EE deployment
6. MySQL or PostgreSQL for relational database

Answer 13

If you've used ReSharper in Visual Studio, you should try the original: IntelliJ IDEA. You can use the EAP for free. You can search for and install plugins directly from the IDE.

Libraries you should look at are Spring and Hibernate. JUnit 4 for testing (it uses annotations for marking tests, just like NUnit uses attributes).

If you make web apps, you'll need a servlet container. Take your pick from Tomcat, Jetty, Glassfish or Resin. All open source and freely available.

Subversion is the de facto standard for version control, but a lot of open source projects now use distributed tools like git or mercurial.

Maven is powerful, but has crap docs and can be difficult to get started with. Ant is probably easier to start with and is not too different from NAnt or MSBuild.

I also recommend reading Effective Java (2nd ed) by Josh Bloch for learning some of the standard idioms. Java Puzzlers by Bloch and Gafter gives you some insight into Java's pitfalls. Spring in Action is a good Spring book.

Answer 14

• IDE: IntelliJ 8.1. Having used Netbeans and Eclipse I still think IntelliJ has the best code editor (in terms of code completion and so on) and refactoring;
• Plug-ins: Very few actually. GenerateToString I guess. Not much that IntelliJ doesn't do;
• Source Control: Subversion;
• Libraries: Spring 2.5. it's hard to imagine any project without Spring. ibatis is another favourite. If I must use JPA then EclipseLink;
• Application Server: Glassfish V2 or V3 Prelude;
• Database: Oracle XE or Mysql;
• Operating System: typically Windows XP but also Ubuntu. I'm strongly considering Mac OSX for my next machine;
• Computer: minimum spec is dual core, 4 gigs of RAM and a 22" widescreen monitor;
• Build: I still use Ant (over Maven) for simplicity; and
• Books, blogs and websites can all be summaried as: Google. I have no specific sites. It's whatever Google can find me when I'm in a bind. For example it's quicker to google "java.util.TreeMap" and click the top link than it is to open the JDK documentation and navigate to it.

Answer 15

• Eclipse
• AspectJ
• svn + subclipse
• JDepend for package dependency management or structure 101
• Junit
• emma + eclipseplugin for code coverage
• ant + ivy
• hibernate most of the time
• oracle most of the time, on private projects oracle XE
• derby as a test database
• log4j for logging
• abbot for swing gui testing
• easymock

the race is still open for web related frameworks and a replacement for ant.

Answer 16

I do a lot of development on both Windows and Linux.

• Eclipse with the following plugins:
  • viPlugin
  • Jigloo GUI Builder
  • OpenExtern
  • Tomcat Launcher
• gvim for out of IDE editing.
• bash (cygwin under windows)
• Ant for command-line/automated building.
• Subversion (TortoiseSVN under windows, svk under linux)
• Occasionally bazaar or git.
• Libraries I commonly use:
  • SLF4J + log4j for logging.
  • Commons Lang, IO, CLI, Configuration, Codec, DBCP, File Upload, HTTP Client and Net as required.
  • JUnit
  • Stringtree-JSON
  • Table Layout
  • Velocity & Velocity Tools
• Not exactly Java, but darn useful when I'm doing web-development:
  • jquery
  • HTML Validator firefox plugin
  • Firebug firefox plugin
  • Web Developer firefox plugin

For documentation, I have most of my HTML based API docs and manuals in a little documentation framework I whipped up that has a frame across the top with context dependant links. See here for the top page, and here for the Java API as an example. All documentation is on my local drive so very fast to access, and not stranded if there is a slow Internet connection.

Answer 17

• IntelliJ IDEA
• Ant 1.7 for building
• JDK 1.5
• JUnit for unit tests
• Subversion for version control
• Hudson for automated builds
• Proprietary scripts for other tasks including making live builds and uploading

Answer 18

I'm amazed by the number of people that are still using Ant. It's a good tool but Maven is much cooler once you get the principles. I use it all the time and I feel a lot more productive with it. Here is my list:

• IDE : Eclipse 3.4
• Plugins : a few (checkstyle, groovy, derby, sometimes spring ide)
• Tools : Jetty (I love mvn jetty:run), Glassfish, Java DB (aka Derby)
• Utilities : Maven 2
• Source/Version Control : SVN and then maven release plugin
• Libraries : Spring, JPA, Hibernate, JAX-WS RI, Struts2, Wicket, Grails
• Books : Effective Java, Professional Java Development with the Spring Framework
• Blog : Nothing specific
• Anything else you feel makes your time developing in Java easier/more efficient/more enjoyable : Ubuntu ?

And some more:

• Testing Frameworks : Junit4 or TestNG and all xUnit frameworks
• Mocking Frameworks : Mockito or EasyMock
• Quality tools : Checkstyle, PMD, Cobertura
• Build : Maven2 (did I mention it ?)
• Continuous Integration : Hudson
• Quality Dashboard : Sonar (take a look if you don't know Sonar)

Answer 19

ide: netbeans

quick and dirty editor: notepad++

tomcat

mysql / ms ssql

source control: subversion with tortoise

tickets: redmine

Answer 20

You certainly need an IDE and Eclipse is darling of many java developers. You certainly need JDK (1.4 or 1.5 depends on your needs). You need a build tool Ant / Maven are at the top of developers' minds. Then you need a Web / Application server - Tomcat, Glassfish, JBOSS etc. A database of your choice.

Well with these in place you can start your development. There are many plug-ins like Checkstyle, Findbugs, PMD etc to aid in better coding. You may use them at your discretion.

Answer 21

• IDE: IntelliJ IDEA
• Plugins: Scala support
• Build Tool: Maven
• Version Control: Git
• Unit testing: JDave, Scala Specs, Mockito
• Utilities: VisualVM
• OS: mostly WinXP
• Hardware: Q6600 @ 3GHz, 4GB RAM, SSD, 24" screen

Answer 22

• IDE: Netbeans
• Plug-ins: Very few actually
• Source Control: Mercurial
• Libraries: jersey, restlet, jodatime, mozilla rhino, antlr, etc; spring or guice as DI framework;
• Unit testing: JUnit 4.x, Mojito (mocking framework)
• Application Server: Glassfish V2 or V3 Prelude
• Database: MySQL, Oracle XE; HSQLDB and/or JavaDB/Derby for unit testing
• Operating System: Windows 7, occasionally also Windows XP or Ubuntu;
• Computer: dual core, 4 gigs of RAM and a 22" widescreen monitor;
• Build: Maven and occasionally Ant and make; I use also Hudson
• Books: many books from manning.com (Spring in Action, EJB3 in Actiom. Ant in Action, iText in Action), Effective Java, etc;

Answer 23

Right now:

• Windows XP
• IntelliJ 8.1 for development and UltraEdit32 for text editing (I have my own license)
• TOAD for Oracle development and SQL Server Management Studio Express for SQL development
• Maven
• Subversion
• JUnit for logging
• Tomcat and Jetty for WebApplications
• The standard Windows Command Prompt, a lot - I kind of feel comfortable with it now
• Trying to adopt Wicket as a Web framework
• Adopted Google Collections as the standard collection library in all projects that I work on (I really like the Lists, Maps and Sets classes, it's a small thing but it helps not having to specify the list element type twice)
• Chrome (it's faster than Firefox and IE specially at my crappy notebook at home)
• Windows Media Player (Winamp doesn't accept too well my keyboard commands)

Answer 24

• Ubuntu @work, Mac @home
• Terminator on Ubuntu
• Eclipse JEE edition with viPlugin, m2Eclipse and Subclipse
• Dbvisualiser
• Mysql, Oracle, Sybase, Postgresql whatever is in the house
• Jboss as application server
• Maven, Ant, Hudson, Cruise Control
• Subversion, CVS in the past
• JUnit for testing
• JBoss Seam framework for Web applications with persistence layer
• APIs outside JDK : Jodatime, Spring and Log4J
• Firefox with Firebug and Webdeveloper plugins
• Books: you can't go wrong with O'reilly books, lately I have been reading lots of "in Action" books of Manning. For instance, Spring in Action. They are not very good as reference, but perfect as introduction. Certification books are thorough and the best for reference and you can of course get a certification with them.
• Blogs and websites : javaranch, Sun java, IBM developerworks, Maven the definitive blog and Dustin Software Development Blog and many more. For blog reading I use Google Reader.

Answer 25

1. Java
2. Eclipse as IDE
3. Some plugins
4. Firefox browser, recently shifted to Chrome.

Answer 26

Have been both professional .NET and Java developer.

IDE: Intellij [Used to use Resharper in VS for .NET] - Exceptionally good

Utilities: Bash, Beyond Compare, Textpad [In windows only], MIT Scheme [for testing something fast, as calculator etc.]

Source/Version Control: Subversion

Database: MySQL

OS: Mac OS X, RHEL [Source folders NFS mounted onto Mac. Mac is mainly used as UI Frontend, with storage, compilation, source control etc. in RHEL!]

Books: Art of computer programming. I hardly read any language specific books nowadays. Thinking in Java was a good book.