Java Development Environments for Macintosh?

spacecowboy420 asks: "My company (with my persuasion) has decided to move from a Windows platform to a Macintosh. The issue that is slowing this move is one of software solutions - more specifically a Jave IDE and Sales Contact Management software. We have been using JBuilder and Act!. Jbuilder is available for mac but is pricey, but the real rub is we need an IDE that supports the JClass Libraries (which Jbuilder does, but we would like to consider an alternative). Act! also doesn't have a mac version, so I am in new territory when it comes to mac contact solutions. What solutions have the Slashdot community found to be the best? What are the thoughts on Power Builder (although I know it doesn't support the JClass Libraries)?."

Comments

Try Onyx

[mjpaci]

Can't help you on the JBuilder aspect of your question, but I may be of help on the contact management/sales datatbase side.

There is a product we use that is web based and very robust called Onyx.

--Mike

Re:Try Onyx

[rot26]

CRM?

EVIL stuff.

JBuilder expensive?

[uradu]

And this from someone who migrated to the Mac? No offense, but switching FROM JBuilder is mostly a downgrade, it's considered one of the best Java IDEs if not THE best.

Uh, meant to reply to the parent.

[uradu]

Sorry!

Re:Shouldn't you have thought of this first?

[Anonymous Coward]

JDK 1.4 for osx is in developer seeds now. Jboss , Bea, and tomcat as well as several other non gui java applications run fine (sometimes better) in the 1.3 enviroment,and many you would not run in the using the 1.4 jdk in production enviroments quite yet.We deploy our apps on several platforms (linux, OSX , windows and solaris) and I find it a joy to program (using netbeans btw.) on OSX.

IDE = IntelliJ, CRM = salesforce.com

[shodson]

The best Java IDE of any OS is supported on OS X: IntelliJ. Check out their FAQ about OS X support.

Try using salesforce.com, a web-based ASP of CRM software, costs about $60 per user/mo though but they host and operate the software and data for you, so you can access it from any browser wherever you are!

netbeans...

[jeffy124]

try a look at NetBeans. Opensource'd under the Sun Public License, cross platform IDE that's written in Java and works quite well. Works for 1.3 or better.

Re:netbeans...

[Zaaf]

Well I have to agree to that. At work we use both Windows nt4 machines and TiBooks. We have a local cvs server on the windows network. And it's completely transparent to checkout netbeans' .java and .form file on both machine types. Or, to go with the apple motto: It just works.

The new release of netbeans (3.4) can autofill any code from any .jar file or directory. So, although I must confess that I do not know anything about JClass, I presume that this is a Useful Feature to you.
Beans can be treated as components and added to the component toolbar, from which they can be dropped onto your form.

HTH

Why is JBuilder Pricey?

[fm6]

Because it doesn't have any real competition.

Think about this. You're spending thousands to license JClass. Apparently you're doing some heavy-duty enterprise applications, so you're spending tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands on hardware, bandwidth, etc. Plus you're spending similar amounts on programmer time.

Yet now you want to skimp on the one tool you use to tie all these expensive pieces together. At most this will save you $3K per programmer. Probably a lot less. If using a less effective tool delays your project just one week, you do not come out ahead. Does this strategy make sense?

XEmacs? Forms

[fm6]

How is EMACS at form design?

Um, this isn't that hard of a question

[DiscoOnTheSide]

It's called "Project Builder" it has complete support for java. It's also free and comes on the Developer Tools CD for Mac OS X. It has support for CVS and other niftyy things I'd imagine you'd use. Check it out.

Re:Shouldn't you have thought of this first?

[spacecowboy420]

We began development with 1.3, and would like to continue with 1.3 instead of changing to 1.4 in the middle of the development cycle. Our reasoning for migration is one based on avoidance of the draconian EULA of Microsoft and their policy of forced obselescence. We also need to have a platform that is good for the sales staff as well as the engineers - this seems to make the MAC an obvious choice. I would prefer a *nix alternative, but prefer to avoid the hand holding overhead. As far as asking slashdot, I am asking about experiences with software instead of installing, trying them out, then moving on to the next - it seems to me a professional works smarter not harder - which is what I am attempting here.

A vote for ProjectBuilder

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I really like ProjectBuilder for java development. PB is developed by Apple and comes free on the Dev Tools CD with Jaguar. It's primarily used for Cocoa/Carbon/Kernel projects, but also fully supports Java, and does a damn good job of it, IMO. On Windows, I use CodeWarrior for Java development. I like it, but after years of using CodeWarrior, I became a PB convert almost overnight. And Apple runs a PB interest list that the PB developers actually read and respond to on a very regular basis.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I should mention that PB doesn't have all the whiz-bang features of other Java-specific IDE's, like RAD GUI development, and the like. At least not that I'm aware of. But, personally, I've never had much use for stuff like that anyway. So, I haven't investigated what, if any, "extras" like this PB has for Java development.

My only real complaint is not with PB itself, but with Apple's slow uptake on new JVM's. I love the way java is just part of the OS. But, I hate how long it takes Apple to catch up to the latest version of the JVM. They've said that this will change. And I know that 1.4 is currently in beta. But still, 1.4 has been out for Windoze/Linux for ages. And 1.4.1 is now available (which has a slightly different class file format, and fixes some memory management issues in 1.4.0). So, when Apple does finally release 1.4, is it going to be 1.4.0 or 1.4.1? I don't know. But I sure hope they can get things more in sync than they are now.

Eclipse

[Anonymous Coward]

Eclipse is a very nice Java IDE. I think it is much much better than ProjectBuilder, mainly because the latter lacks code-completion. Eclipse works great with CVS, unit-tests, debugger, you name it.

Furthermore it is:
- 100% Free
- 100% Open Source

Although there are no builds available for macosX I know it can be done, a colleague of mine had it running on his ibook a few months ago.

Re:Eclipse

[AIXadmin]

There is now a port of Eclipse to Mac OS X written in Carbon. You can find it on the front page of the eclipse web site at http://www.eclipse.org

Learn VIM or Emacs

[GusherJizmac]

Learn vim or emacs. Preferrably vim. Knowing a powerful open-source text editor available on all platforms will be way more valuable than any special-sauce JBuilder or equivalent.

emacs has been around for years and years and is very robust and powerful.

vim (based on vi, which has been around for years and years) has been around for a really long time and is extremely powerful.

Both are far more powerful development environments than ANY IDE or any editor (sorry JEdit) and can interoperate with ANY SYSTEM YOU CAN THINK OF.

Learn them now!

(Oh yeah, use ant or make for building your system. Preferably make, but ant is easier when are you just starting and is more cross-platform)

Re:Learn VIM or Emacs

[bwt]

Both are far more powerful development environments than ANY IDE or any editor (sorry JEdit) and can interoperate with ANY SYSTEM YOU CAN THINK OF.

People say this kind of thing all the time. I use vi when all I have is a shell, but I do not understand why you would call them a "more powerful development" environment that something like JEdit or an IDE. How do you justify this statement?

Re:Learn VIM or Emacs

[GusherJizmac]

Vim has all the features of any IDE: you can compile code and jump to the errors, you can get help from within the file, you can get syntax highlighting, you can get code completion, you can browse directories from within the editor, and the editor is far, far, far more powerful and configurable than any editor in any IDE. Plus, it works with ANY language and you do not have to wait for the vendor to allow you to do something or work with something, since it's almost infinitly configurable (and the source is available), you can do whatever you want. It presents absolutely no barriers to your development, other than your deisre to learn the tool and to use it. If you really like clicking buttons and menus, it has a GUI mode available on all platforms (except DOS :) that allows full customization of any menus.

I justify it by pointing you to the vim website and accompanying documentation. Note that vim != vi.

The same can all be said about emacs, though I don't use emacs, so I can't say for sure.

Re:Learn VIM or Emacs

[Samrobb]

Take a look at any Java-aware text editor: InteliJ, Eclipse's integrated text editor, etc. Because they are understand exactly which language they are being used with, and it happens to be a language with some pretty damn good introspecion interfaces, these editors have features - code refactoring, context-sensitive search and replace, inheritance/implementation skeletons, runtime code completion, and more - than emacs and vi can't even come close to matching.

I prefer a language-friendly (not just capable) editor when working on Java or C++.

I prefer a language-neutral editor (vi) when working on multiple types of text files.

How hard is it to understand that?

And, just in case you try to extend this into a steaming pile of GUI editor vs. non-GUI editor garbage: if all I had was a console, and if I were working on Java, you can bet your bootstraps I would be using vi only for the time it took me to find a decent console version of a Java-aware editor.

Re:Learn VIM or Emacs

[TheAJofOZ]

Vim has all the features of any IDE: you can compile code and jump to the errors, you can get help from within the file, you can get syntax highlighting, you can get code completion, you can browse directories from within the editor

Woah, woah.... Code completion??? Is there a HOWTO for that and does it support your own custom classes as well as the JRE classes?

And how do I compile code (preferably by running ant)?

Sheesh, I've been using vim for years and never stubled across those features.....

Re:Learn VIM or Emacs

[Sentry21]

Presumably, the claim comes about because anyone could script IDE features into Vim or EMACS. That would be stupid, and a waste of time, but I think that's their logic.

--Dan

Re:Learn VIM or Emacs

[ianezz]

...the claim comes about because anyone could script IDE features...

It has already been done, at least for Emacs. Have a look at the OO-Browser and JDEE, plus all that comes with GNU Emacs like:

• Version Control
• compiling and debugging
• abbreviations/completion
• ...and a dozen or so of language-specific programming modes (with syntax highlinghting, auto-indentation, etc.).

Plus, creating your own elisp code to do whatever you want (not just silly keyboard macros) is quite simple, and there are already tons of useful snippets and code examples out there. This can hardly be said for other editors, except for Vim and JEdit (which I personally consider on par with Emacs, except it requires more resources to run).

I can't speak for Vim, since I use it just occasionally, but I'm confident that it provides equivalent functionalities.

Re:Learn VIM or Emacs

[Pengo]

because they don't exist, not as you expect it.

You can get ant to compile easily by writing a simple make file that executes the ANT build file though.

Re:Learn VIM or Emacs

[kuhneng]

Emacs JDE mode does all of this out of the box.

Code completeion works for JRE, classpath, or custom classes, and ant integration is built in.

Contact Solution

[medcalf]

I suggest either Palm Desktop (really - it has a good contact manager), Now Contact or Jaguar's Address Book. Depends on what you need, though, and none of these is an exact analogue of Act!

I'm not familiar enough with Java development on the Mac to make recommendations. Pity that the RTFM idiots have now taken to trolling in Ask Slashdot, or you might have gotten better answers on that.

Re:Shouldn't you have thought of this first?

[BitGeek]

The only ego here is yours.

Apple's VM tracks sun fairly closely... but they also have a lot of optimization that they do beyond what sun ships. Thus, Apple's releases will not coincide with Suns. And this is a Good Thing.

Its not like not using 1.4 is bad-- 1.4 is a minor update, and anyone developing java software right now really should not be requiring 1.4.

Furthermore, Apples 1.4 will likely be out soon, and will likely, once again, be the best VM on the market.

You should be happy he's leaving windows, rather than let your ego flame him for choosing mac.

Forte / SunOne Studio

[wessto]

Sun has developed Forte for Java which is based on netbeans. It now goes by Sun One Studio. Anyway, it is a nice IDE and users at my company are generally split 50/50 between that and JBuilder. They have a free Community version as well as some commercial versions.

IntelliJ IDEA

[PierceLabs]

This is the best IDE around for a reasonable amount of money. You can get to it at http://www.intellij.com. I used to use Eclipse on the Windows platform before switching to this because it works everywhere - it supports refactoring, and its fast ... damn fast. The moment I saw it refactor a filename all the way into CVS and fix other files in CVS that imported it, I knew I'd found the right product for me.

Re:Java is for wimps

[bwt]

That is so passe. Good luck with your device driver. Is it portable?

Re:Shouldn't you have thought of this first?

[Alan Partridge]

"His "cost cutting" was really a case of "I'm too stupid and lazy to support more than one kind of computer.""

do you KNOW my admin?

C'mon. IDE's are important for productivity.

[Paradox]

Emacs and VI are quite powerful, both offer a rich variety of features. However, while they are suitable for IDE's they are not really ideal in this area without a lot of customization, tinkering, knoweldge of eLisp, and time.

Time isn't cheap. Time is expensive and precious. It's the one resource you or I can't replenish. I'd rather use an expensive IDE that saves me time rather than a potentially better editor that requires weeks to learn (yes, I already know them both quite well, but that's because I've used them for about 4 years now).

This is the reason I use Apple's IDE. It's easy to set up, it's very professional, has a nice debugging feature and class browser, and gives you lots of useful feedback. Sure, I can't program an MP3 encoder in LISP and have it run from my text editor, and sure, I might have to use the mouse periodically with it. So what? It saves time compared to the slow process of getting emacs set up just the way I like it or setting up a series of scripts to automate tasks I'd run from VI.

Interoperability isn't really an excuse. Source is saved as ascii text. The only area you could possibly have trouble is line breaks. They're all interoperable.

In a real dev environment, time saving dev tools such as an IDE are essential.

Re:C'mon. IDE's are important for productivity.

[GusherJizmac]

Emacs and VI are quite powerful, both offer a rich variety of features. However, while they are suitable for IDE's they are not really ideal in this area without a lot of customization, tinkering, knoweldge of eLisp, and time.

IDEs require lots of configuration as well. No project works exactly as the IDE vendor tells you. IDEs also lock you into working the way the vendor wants you to work. The fact that they are integrated may save you some setup time, but you are going to be less productive, especially the second you hit something that your IDE decided not to allow you to do.

Time isn't cheap. Time is expensive and precious. It's the one resource you or I can't replenish. I'd rather use an expensive IDE that saves me time rather than a potentially better editor that requires weeks to learn (yes, I already know them both quite well, but that's because I've used them for about 4 years now).

You spend most of your time coding typing in an editor. Your productivity is increased if you have an editor that lets you work the way you want to. It's a fallacy that an IDE automatically increases productivity. Every project I've seen them used on cause decreases in productivity.

Interoperability isn't really an excuse. Source is saved as ascii text. The only area you could possibly have trouble is line breaks. They're all interoperable.

What I mean is that the editor can interoperate with any other external program. Using make? vi and emacs will work. Using ant? they work. Using proprietary scripts because your project requires it and there's no other choice? vi and emacs work.

In terms of your percieved waste of time in setting up the editors, it's something you do once in your life for the vast majority of configuration needed. Setting it up for project-specific is not very time-consuming, and quite simple once you know the tool.

In a real dev environment, time saving dev tools such as an IDE are essential.

Not in my experience. And, anyway, an engineer that knows either VI or emacs really well can hit the ground running in almost any situation, which all the slaves to IDE-of-the-month are struggling to find out why hitting F5 doesn't compile their code. The arguments for open source and open standards in software apply to development tools. You are doing yourself a favor by using open, standard, easily understand and easily/widely available developer tools. When I bought a Mac, and wanted to do Java development on it, I had to just copy my .vimrc over to my home directory and I was ready to go. This guy is still looking for some JBuilder alternative, when he could be getting the job done.

Re:C'mon. IDE's are important for productivity.

[vrmlguy]

Here's my ideal IDE: while [[ $quit != y ]] do vi mypgm.c make mypgm && ./mypgm echo -n 'Quit? ' read quit done

the IDE issue.

[GOD_ALMIGHTY]

I don't know anything about Act! or how you were planning on using it with or without Java. I also can't really comment on a CRM system for Mac.

As far as JClass and an IDE go. Take your pick. I personally prefer Intellij's IDEA. You could use VIM, WebSphere Studio or NetBeans if you want. The JClass stuff is pure JavaBeans, which means you get to do drag and drop programming in any IDE's GUI builder.

Since neither IntelliJ or VIM have GUI designer's it looks like you prolly want NetBeans or JBuilder.(IntelliJ's beta releases also require JDK 1.4, so that may not work on Mac for a while.)
I personally don't like the way NetBeans works, but if your looking for a cheap solution that will allow you to use JClass in a GUI designer it's the way to go.

Quite frankly, you don't sound incredibly knowledgable about developing Java solutions. Don't take that as an insult, just an observation since you left out a lot of information pertinent to your question. Do some more research using Google next time. Most of your questions can be answered if you better understand your problem.

You can use JClass in anything you want. Import the Jar's, make sure they're on the classpath, then write the code by hand that accesses the classes and methods in your own code. The fact that they're JavaBeans allows the GUI designer to automagically load up the properties and provide you with a visual way of laying out the components and hooking them up together. Read more about JavaBeans if your interested in this. You should be writing your own JavaBeans to speed your internal development. BTW, XDoclet now supports JavaBeans, so you can generate all the extraneous classes required by IDE's from the actual Beans source code. It's pretty slick.

Stay away from Powerbuilder. I'm currently developing a J2EE solution in a Powerbuilder shop. It's a nice self-contained environment, but it doesn't integrate well with others. I have no personal experience try to do this, but the other developers on this project have been writing Powerbuilder apps around here for the past 8 years. If you don't think you'll ever have to integrate your powerbuilder apps with anything else, it's a fast and easy solution. It's also pretty powerful for data entry and reporting. Just keep in mind that after 8 years of Powerbuilder, these guys chose J2EE.

Good Luck

CodeGuide

[Jammerlappen]

Look at CodeGuide from OmniCore. Nice IDE, nice MacOS X integration. We've been using it for six months now.

Use CodeWarrior

[kuwan]

If you want to use a program that lives and breathes Mac, then you should use CodeWarrior by Metrowerks. It's quite a bit cheaper than JBuilder and also features C/C++ and ObjectiveC compilers along with Java. Most Mac applications have been written in CodeWarrior and it has been the defacto standart development environment on the Mac since forever. I've been using it for 6 years for everything I ever do. It have Java RAD tools (though I think JBuilders are better) that are OK and get the job done. It also has code completion that includes a JavaDoc explanation of each method/class that are available, something that I JBuilder doesn't have. CodeWarrior is also a native Mac application (as opposed to Java) so it's quite a bit faster than pure Java IDEs.

I use both JBuilder and CodeWarrior at work (JBuilder for laying out the GUI and CodeWarrior for everything else) and I spend 90% of my time in CodeWarrior. I think it's just much more polished than anything else.

As far as a JClass alternative, try out PopChart by CORDA Technologies.

Re:Java is for wimps

[quintessent]

Real programmers don't even use computers. They write everything as operations on a Turing Machine language, and then run the operations with a paper and pencil.

The IDE's of Mac

[wazzzup]

Check out the O'Reilly Network here:

http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2002/04/16 /o sx_java.html

It's a quick overview of the Java IDE's available for OS X, namely IntelliJ's IDEA, Borland's JBuilder, Apple's Project Builder, the open source NetBeans/Sun's Forte, Eclipse from OTI and Jedit. The article was written in April so it may not be entirely current as to what's available but it should get you going.

Re:Out of curiosity...

[MoneyT]

Probably to avoid being associated with users who ask such dumb questions...

TogetherSoft

[DoenerMord]

http://www.togethersoft.com/

TogetherSoft has a Mac OS X version of their Control Center product. I believe there's a free trial if you wanna check it out. Developers here are using it now for Java work, albeit on Windows and Linux.

Cease and desist

[MoneyT]

Dear Father Randy,

It has come to our attention here at Microsoft, that you have recently purchased a Macintosh. This explicitly violates the "No other vendors because I like the way Microsoft bites by balls" contract which you signed when you first became a Bill Gates Male Groupie. We must ask you to cease all contacts with Apple and related machines, or we will be forced to cut back on your supply of custom Soiled Bill Gates Boxers. Further violations will cause you to loose all access privlages to the BOHICA box.

Signed
Microsoft Corporate Sex Toy #1265

[note to moderators: I know I shouldn't feed the trolls, but sometimes you just gotta]

Re:Shouldn't you have thought of this first?

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The Mac ships with Java 1.3 but not yet 1.4 (afaik), and for that reason is not an ideal platform for Java development. Linux, Windows and Solaris are ideal platforms -- shouldn't you look at them first?

This is obviously just an ideology game on your part, and you aren't putting your company's business needs first. You should not be in charge of IT decisions.

He doesn't say what else his business does, or what other reasons they may have for moving to Macs. It's entirely possible that Macs suit their business better than any other platform in most ways, and that this problem is one of the few downsides.

I love Macs, too, but if you have to Ask Slashdot, you are not a professional.

[yawn] I'm really sick of people ripping on Ask Slashdot. Here's a clue: if you think the people who post questions to Ask Slashdot are idiots, don't read it. I goddamn well am a professional, and you're full of shit if you think otherwise -- and while A.S. is far from the only resource I use when I have tricky questions, or even the first, it has in the past provided me with a whole lot of immensely valuable information. One of the things I like best about IT is having a wide network of knowledgeable peers who are generally very willing to share the benefits of their experience. Attitudes like yours do nothing but harm to the field as a whole.

some actual help (as opposed to bitching)

[wilseven]

this product called daylight looks kinda cool... http://www.marketcircle.com/daylite/index.html also saw this when I was trying to find their site: http://osx.hyperjeff.net/Apps/Business.html good luck.

Net beans

[gumbi west]

I use NetBeans and it works great. They claim OS X is ready to run it on their site.

Re:IDE's are for wimps

[MaggieL]

jEdit does indeed rock hard. And for minimalists such as myself, BlueJ (http://www.bluej.org) is a damn fine IDE. I tend to use both...depending on what I'm up to at a particular time. BlueJ uses the JVM debugging interface, very nice tool.

I disagree

[conan_albrecht]

I use a Powerbook and love OS X. However, I have to disagree that Apple's VM is the best one out there. I *will* heartily agree that it has the very best integration with the OS. The modified Swing looks awesome and uses regular Cocoa-type controls.

However, I do a lot of development of server-side stuff and benchmark most of them on my 800MHz/1GB RAM Powerbook against my Linux PIII-500, and the PIII is at least 4 times faster for any program (and usually quite a bit more than that). Exact same bytecode, compiled and written on the Powerbook. Executes many times faster on Blackdown's JVM.

Perhaps it's just the processors, but you'd think my G4 would be faster than my PIII.

Re:I disagree

[BitGeek]

I remain unconvinced. Your anecdotal evidence doesn't really meet the standard of a scientific controlled comparison.

Its possible that IBM's VM is a bit faster than the Macs, but Suns is mostly a reference VM and the others aren't that great in my experience.

Apple's VM is very, very good, but more importantly, if it hasn't caught up with IBM yet, they are well on their way to possibly passing IBM and certainly giving them a run for the money.

Eclipse on OS X status?

[melquiades]

Although there are no builds available for macosX I know it can be done, a colleague of mine had it running on his ibook a few months ago.

I've heard several rumors about Eclipse running on OS X, but indeed, there seem not to be any builds of it generally available. I know that the major obstacle is porting SWT, and I know that the effort was supposedly going pretty well.

What's the current status of Eclipse on OS X? If it works, why aren't there any binaries out there? What gives?

Eclipse is pretty nice. I'd love to be able to use it.

Re:Eclipse on OS X status?

[Wesley Felter]

I never understood why nobody provided binaries either. I tried Eclipse back in the build-it-yoruself days and it worked fine on OS X.

Re:Shouldn't you have thought of this first?

[noz]

Something tells me he didn't:

1. Ask his boss if he could please have 10 new PowerMacs,
2. Throw out all the companies PCs,
3. Sit at his desk staring at the wall with the rest of the development team until they arrived, and then
4. Discover their old software wasn't portable.

I think he has approval for the hardware changeover proposal, and now is starting to gather more information.

yes

[johnjones]

of course

littlefinger aches

regards

John Jones

Re:The Ultimate Team Organization Software

[kwerle]

I'd love to hear from anyone who has used TUTOS - both good and bad. I installed it once and was not impressed. Then again, I've never installed any team software bofore or since - so you might not want to listen to me...