Category: intellij

IntelliJ IDEA

My standard tools on a Windows workstation

If I have to work on a Windows machine, these are the tools I usually install and use:

Free/Libre/Open Source

Free/Libre/Open Source software (“FLOSS”) with OSI certified Open Source license

Cross-platform:

  • Latest JDK
  • Intellij (Community Edition)
  • 7zip
  • Eclipse (Platform Runtime Binary + plugins required for my work)
  • Apache Tomcat
  • Apache Maven
  • Git (from git-scm.org)
  • Cygwin (with openssh, wget, nano)
  • Firefox (with Adblock, Secure Login, Firebug, Uppity)
  • Filezilla
  • LibreOffice
  • Pidgin
  • Gimp
  • Gvim
  • Wireshark
  • OpenVPN

Windows-only:

  • Notepad++
  • PdfCreator
  • Infrarecorder
  • CamStudio
  • Link Shell Extension

Closed source

Binaries currently available for download without license fees:

  • Adobe Reader
  • Sysinternals
  • Deskpins
  • MWSnap

JRuby on Rails 3.2

I currently have to work on an application using JRuby on Rails 3.2. My background is 12+ years of Java centric web development using Eclipse or IntelliJ.

There are a few things that I love about working with Java in Eclipse or IntelliJ that I miss when working with Rails:

  • Java’s backwards compatibility
  • Java’s cross-platform consistency
  • That Java has a static type system and is a compiled language
  • The relatively rigid syntax of Java that prevents idiosyncratic DSLs
  • Being able to control mutability, extensibility and visibility at compile-time (private, final)
  • Java’s distinction of interfaces vs implementation classes
  • Powerful auto-completion and Refactoring in the IDE
  • Powerful code inspections and quickfixes in the IDE
  • IDE and compiler feedback about mistakes and design flaws in my code
  • The powerful and rich ORM features of JPA and Hibernate

Dynamic language fans might cringe at some of the points listed above. Feel free to provide constructive feedback or well-reasoned criticism.

There are however a couple of things that I like about Ruby on Rails 3.2:

  • Dependency management using gems and bundler
  • A very standardized project layout (directory structure and conventions)
  • Code generation (as a convenient way to quickly create sample code)
  • Out-of the box integration and support for JQuery, CoffeeScript, SASS
  • Cool gems like colorbox-rails for turning a regular view into a modal dialog
  • The asset pipeline

I am still in the early phase of my Rails experience and I will try to post more about it as things evolve.

Java DSL for object-oriented type-safe CSS styling

I am looking for something like this Java-CSS-Library, to implement server-generated CSS stylesheets backed by a type-safe object-oriented model of CSS classes and rule sets.

This is part of my ongoing quest for the perfect “pure Java” web development framework that would allow me to

  • Focus on my strongest area of expertise: Elegant Java code
  • Use refactorings and other advanced Java tooling in Eclipse or IntelliJ Community Edition
  • Ignore the HTML/HTTP vs JVM objects impedance mismatch as much as possible

Sharing IntelliJ project configuration (.idea, *.iml) in version control

Me and my team do exactly what Christof Schablins describes in this blog post and what the Jetbrains folks recommend here: We use IntelliJ IDEA and share *.iml files (modules) and most files in .idea directory (project config) in the Version Control System (in our case CVS), including shared ant configs, shared run configs for Tomcat 6 and JUnit tests, shared project specific code inspection profile, shared data source definitions, etc.

Overall it works great. But we noticed a few things:

  • Needed an IntelliJ Path variable TOMCAT_HOME because devs have Tomcat installed in different places
  • Dialog “Do you want to add workspace.xml to CVS” keeps popping up (despite an entry in .cvsignore file within the .idea directory)
  • If devs have different sets of IntelliJ plugins enabled, each plugin adds its default code inspection rules to the shared profile (even if the project does not use them, e.g. Ruby stuff in a pure Java project). So developers have to be cautious not to check in those changes (or accept the bloat they cause)

So my question is: Have you come across these or similar issues and did you solve them?