Time saving Java development

I recently ran into some issues with a commercially support product that reduces development time by eliminating the need for recompile/deployment after every code change.  When it's working, this can save hours with a variety of Java development spaces and is well worth checking out.


The commercial product for this purpose is indeed a very good one and worthy of the praise it has gotten but alternatives and competition can be good.  Having said that, Javeleon is a free tool developed by a group of researchers at the University of Southern Denmark.


While I know my way around Eclipse and will use Intellij if and when I must, I happen to be a NetBeans fan at this point in time.  With respect to Javeleon, that's a good thing because the NetBeans plugin is a breeze to install and configure in an application.  [Javeleon has a standalone version of their product and there is a third party Eclipse plugin which I have not yet tried.]


Most of my Java development is done on a Mac and this was the cause of some trouble for me.  The problem I ran into was that the application would not start up in debug mode (run worked OK but that's not much help for productivity gains).  


At this point I am including the output from the NetBeans debug session in case someone else should run into this issue:


debug:
Have no file for
/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Classes/jsfd.jar
Have no file for
/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Frameworks/JavaRuntimeSupport.framework/Resources/Java/JavaRuntimeSupport.jar
Have no file for
/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Classes/laf.jar
Have no file for
/System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Classes/sunrsasign.jar
[Jul 11, 2012 4:47:47 AM] [WARNING] JaveleonBoot Bootclasspath not
specified, using
-Xbootclasspath/p:/var/folders/c2/nzcxfwz10klc216rvj9xnjwr0000gn/T//JaveleonBoot/r606/
[Jul 11, 2012 4:47:54 AM] [INFO] Running in debug mode with Javeleon
requires a bootstrapping cache to exist. The cache is now built so
please start the application again.
BUILD SUCCESSFUL (total time: 8 seconds)


Apparently there are some known issues with NetBeans 7.x (I am currently running 7.2 rc1) and Java 1.6 on the Mac but after doing some research and unsuccessful experimentation this gave me a chance to try to the Javeleon support.  I am always impressed with the enthusiasm that I often find in developers of open source and/or free software which is obviously ongoing.  There is something about the pride one takes in development which spills over into support while resources permit.  In this case the issue was resolved via three emails in a matter of hours which was very impressive.


I suggest you try Javeleon.  This post walks through a nice example.  The "fix" for the problem I encountered on OS X was quite simple in the end.  When configuring the project, the JaveleonBoot folder needs to be specified as "/tmp/JaveleonBoot/java6" if using Java 1.6.  If you happen to be using Java 1.7, you may not see the problem at all (at least I did not).


Thank you Javeleon guys and happy coding

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