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Tools I use for Java development under Win32
Last updated Monday, August 10, 1998 .

Tools and things I've found useful for developing in Java.

Kawa

Ok, here it is. If you choose to use an IDE at all, use this. Basically, this guy wrote a clone of the Visual DevStudio (Visual J++) development environment that works clean with the stock JDK from Sun. Even debugging is cool. This program has single-handedly changed my mind about IDE's and Java.

Java Development Kit v1.1.6

This is it, you only need this, really, to do Java. Everything else makes it sweeter to develop. Make sure you get the JDK documentation, it's a separate download.

GWD Text Editor v2.0

I tried out a lot of text editors trying to replace Notepad. I wanted something that would not only do programming source, but also html and anything else I wanted to edit that was text with syntax highlighting. I'm convinced that this is the best text editor with syntax highlighting on the planet today. Get it right now.

JHLClassDependancy

This goes through your applet or application and generates a full list of all the classes needed. It's awesome for making sure you're packing everything necessary when you release a project.

GridBag

This is basically a live model of what GridBagLayout and GridBagConstraints are doing. I didn't truly understand these classes until I tinkered with this. Use this as a modeller to figure out what settings you need to get the interface looking right.

JDiff

A file difference viewer built in Java. This is almost exactly like the WinDiff that ships with Visual SourceSafe from Microsoft. Appears to not be available any longer from the company who made it, CSFactory. So, I'm mirroring it unless they complain.

JGrep

A grep text searching utility built in Java. Has both gui and command-line interfaces. The place I got it from originally also seems to be gone, so I'm mirroring this as well.

Jikes Debugger v1.10

It's very, very cool to have a visual debugger when you really need one without having to have the bloat of a full IDE. Two things to remember: compile with -g and use a main() wrapper around applets to avoid debugging through appletviewer.