Raible Designs

My IDEA Evaluation - Eclipse is better

I've been trying to use IDEA (on OS X) for the past few weeks and I keep reverting back to Eclipse for features that seem to be missing. I know the features must be there, but I just can't find them. Why else would everyone like it so much? Sidenote: I've never used IDEA for a feature that doesn't exist in Eclipse - I'm sure there are some, I'm just not using them. It sure would be cool if someone created a HowTo explaining how to migrate from Eclipse to IDEA. In the meantime, I'll settle for posting my questions here:

• Debugging in Tomcat - I'm currently using Sysdeo's Tomcat Plugin in Eclipse for Tomcat 4.1.27. It's super easy to setup and use - I expect the same ease-of-use from IDEA. I haven't looked much, but I'd love to hear feedback on IDEA's Tomcat debugging support.
• Renaming a variable in a JavaBean renames getter and setter methods. Sounds simple enough, in my 10 second search, I couldn't find it. In Eclipse, right-click -> Refactor -> Rename.
• Override/Implement methods (from parent classes and interfaces). Right click -> Source -> Override/Implement methods in Eclipse.

I'll add more as I think of them throughout the day. So far, I like IDEA, but to be honest - it's not saving me any time over Eclipse. It also locks up as much as Eclipse and it's responsiveness is still a big sluggish on OS X (10.2.8) with 1 GB of RAM (1.33 MHz processor). Hopefully Panther will make both IDEs faster. Two weeks ago, I was thinking of buying it (as well as Dreamweaver) - now I'm frustrated with IDEA's lack of features and Dreamweaver's slowness. I'll probably pass on shelling out the cash since Eclipse and BBEdit are giving me all the features I need in IDEA and Dreamweaver.

JSTL and Dreamweaver has JSP Tag Completion

I discovered today that there is are new releases of the JSP Standard Tag Library over at Jakarta's Taglibs project. JSTL 1.0 has a Standard 1.0.4 release from September 25th, and there's also an early access 1.1 release (for Servlet 2.4/JSP 2.0). If you're doing JSP development and you're not using JSTL, you'd better start - these tags are huge timesavers and are fairly easy to learn (especially if you know JavaScript).

I also discovered a nice feature in Dreamweaver 2004 - Tag Library code completion. I believe Dreamweaver MX (v6.0) had this as well, but I never use DW on a PC (it's too slow). Now that I'm giving a go at using OS X all the time, I need to use DW so I can get an explorer-like window (BBEdit doesn't seem to have this). It's pretty slick - you just import the .tld or .jar and whalla - you've got tag library code completion. The one downside is that it does not support importing multiple libraries from one JAR file (i.e. Struts or JSTL), so you do have to import the .tld files (selecting all .tld files in a directory works). It might actually be worth the $400 if I keep developing on a Mac. I don't know about IDEA - I started using Eclipse today after using IDEA for the past week and it felt like I was home again.

Lastly, iBatis has a new release. I upgraded from 1.2.7b to 1.2.8 in my current project and all our tests ran without a hitch. Gotta love unit tests.

Skinning your applications and Apache+Tomcat on RH9

Here are a couple of links I found on mailing lists that might be of use:

• Xkins: Xkins framework uses Velocity to process snippets of HTML, but you can use any other template processor (Xkins comes with it's own default processor). Xkins also comes with Forms Tag Libs, that allows you to create forms using Xkins and comes with four Skins. Xkins Forms integrates with Struts framework. Xkins also fits perfect in JSF world, playing a role as a RenderKit, and can work with other presentation frameworks, (i.e. struts-layout).I'll stick with simple XHTML and CSS. If I need different layouts (HTML), I'll use a different base tile.
• John Turner has published a Tomcat 4.1.27 + Apache 2.0.47 HowTo. This is similar to mine, but looks much cleaner and to the point.

Later: I discovered the beauty of John's HowTo this evening. It allows you to specify one measly line in Apache's httpd.conf file and only a few lines in Tomcat's server.xml file and viola Tomcat configures itself! It sets up aliases and such for each webapp that you have deployed. As an example, here's dynamically created section for AppFuse:

#################### localhost:/appfuse ####################                                       
                                                                                                       
# Static files                                                                                     
Alias /appfuse "/opt/dev/tools/jakarta-tomcat-4.1.27/webapps/appfuse"                              
                                                                                                       
<Directory "/opt/dev/tools/jakarta-tomcat-4.1.27/webapps/appfuse">                         
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks                                                                 
    DirectoryIndex index.jsp                                                                       
</Directory>                                                                                  

# Deny direct access to WEB-INF and META-INF                                                       
#                                                                                                  
<Location "/appfuse/WEB-INF/*">                                                                 
    AllowOverride None                                                                             
    deny from all                                                                                  
</Location>                                                                                 
                                                                                                       
<Location "/appfuse/META-INF/*">                                                              
    AllowOverride None                                                                             
    deny from all                                                                                  
</Location>                                                                                   
                                                                                                       
JkMount /appfuse/j_security_check  ajp13                                                           
JkMount /appfuse/auth/*  ajp13                                                                     
JkMount /appfuse/register/*  ajp13                                                                 
JkMount /appfuse/passwordHint/*  ajp13                                                             
JkMount /appfuse/*.do  ajp13                                                                       
JkMount /appfuse/*.jsp  ajp13                                  

I had all of this working great - I even had Apache upgraded to 2.0.47 on OS X (serving localhost/~user files and everything)! And then I rebooted... Now in catalina.out, I'm getting the following - ugh...

BAD packet 256                                                                                      
In: : [B@c283b5 4/843                                                                               
01 00 03 47 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  | ...G............                                 
00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  | ................ 

WTF?!

Solved: I got this solved fairly easily. I had modified /usr/sbin/apachectl so that the HTTPD variable pointed to /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd rather than /usr/sbin/httpd. I fixed it by removing /usr/bin/apachectl and executing "ln -s /usr/local/apache2/bin/apachectl /usr/sbin/apachectl". Now if I could only get the Rendezvous mod working on 2.0.x.

A day of upgrades

I upgraded this site to the latest code from Roller's CVS, and I'm now running Tomcat 5.0.12 Beta. It seems to be working like a charm for FreeRoller so why not? I also upgraded to Eclipse M4 on OS X and WinXP. For those of you looking for a JSP Editor for Eclipse, try Lomboz. I'm using it and it seems to work fairly well. As far as I can tell, all it gives you is syntax highlighting. I tend to use Homesite or BBEdit for JSP pages - they're better HTML editors and always will be IMO. There never will be a "I can do everything" IDE, so why keep searching? Though it would be nice if someone would figure out code-completion for custom tag libraries.

All upgrades seem to have gone smoothly and backups were made in case they crap out.

Update: The Lomboz plugin sucks, at least with the latest Eclipse. Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V don't work ~ maybe that's a good thing...

New Gig starts November 3rd

I gave my notice on Monday and will be starting a new gig on November 3rd. My reasons are simple: I can bill for the commute (45 minutes each way), I can work from home 1-2 days per week, mentoring/teaching opportunities and the biggest - they want me to help them build a Resume Entry application. Sweet - I'm hoping to use Struts Resume as a baseline. If they agree to use Struts Resume, we'll have half the project done on my first day! The hard parts will be getting it to run on WebSphere and DB2 - their platforms (that I've never worked with). They're hiring me as a mentor on Java and Eclipse and also expect me to cut a fair amount of code. It'll be cool to have mentor as part of my job description. It's also a government agency, which means 40 hour weeks and no weekends. If anyone has gotten WebSphere running on OS X, hooka brutha up!

I gave my current gig a 4 week notice because I want to help them roll out the first phase of websites, and verify that architecture I helped them build actually works. They're looking to replace me with someone that has similar skills. They're located in Lafayette, Colorado - and it really is a fun place to work. Here's the most important things to know for this position: Struts, Ant, JSP and Tomcat. Let me know if you're interested.

IDEA seems dumb

I'm going to rant about my issues with IDEA here because it always gets to so much praise in blogs. I like the fact that it opens quickly on OS X. However, every other time I open it, after it spends 10-20 seconds "loading project files," then synchronized local VCS and then the dialog hangs and I can't get rid of "storing local CVS." Closing IDEA fixes the problem usually. Secondly - and this is a new one - I just created/opened a new project (Canoo's WebTest) and it can't find import java.util.Map; What the? You can't find "java" files even though I told you my JDK was in "/usr" (which it should've detected anyway). It's highly likely that I'm the dumb one, but at this very moment it seems that IDEA gets to wear the dunce cap.

Packaging Velocity

I've made a number of changes to struts-menu this week, and it now supports the ability to render menus via Velocity templates. This allows for easy customization and basically allows for you to create any type of navigation system you want (i.e. drop-downs, tabs, plain ol' links) etc. One of the issues I'm wrestling with is how should I package Velocity with the distribution. Usually, to integrate struts-menu into a Struts-based application, you only need to include struts-menu.jar. Now, if you want to use Velocity for your menus, you must include velocity.jar and velocity-tools.jar in your application's WEB-INF/lib. I think most users will accept this.

However, in the example app, there's a velocity.properties file and a couple example templates. This seems like an opportunity for many users to forget to include these - so I'm wondering what's the best way to package these. Should I put velocity.properties in the source tree, and initialize my VelocityMenuDisplayer using that? Should I do a check to see if the user has their own velocity.properites in WEB-INF/classes for an optional override?

Another question is should I put the sample templates (simple.html and coolmenus.html so far) in the source tree, and then use Velocity to load them from the struts-menu.jar file? Or should I package them in a menu-templates.jar file?

Basically, it all boils down to this question: If you have a project (.jar) that depends on Velocity and plugs into web applications - what is the best way to distribute your Velocity settings?

BTW, I hope to make an effort to decouple this library from Struts someday - shouldn't be too hard.

Thought of the day ~ WebWork

"At least when I do decide to sit down and learn WebWork 2, I won't have to learn WebWork 1."

I will learn it (someday), and I expect it to only take a day or two, but I'm going to wait for someone else to figure out how to do everything, and then I'll read about it and search the mailing lists. I feel like I've learned every little nuance of Struts (and many other OS packages) - I'd rather someone else swim in these bleeding-edge waters first. Hope I can stay dis-interested for a while longer... ;-)

Java books I'm considering

Because it never hurts to have a good reference book around, I'm in the market to load up my bookshelf again. Don't know if I'll actually read these suckers, but I use these tools all the time, and I'm tired of searching on Google. I've found that just having these types of books are invaluable for a quick reference.

• The complete log4j manual
• Tomcat: The Definitive Guide
• Java Open Source Programming: with XDoclet, JUnit, WebWork, Hibernate
• JUnit in Action
• CVS Pocket Reference
• Eclipse in Action: A Guide for the Java Developer

Any other recommendations - or better alternatives to the ones I've listed?

RE: IDEA vs Eclipse

I love Eclipse and always have. However, it kinda sucks on OS X. It is slow like Marcus says. Actually, it's a LOT snappier on my new PowerBook, but it's still much slower than it is on Windows. On Windows, it runs lickedy split and is by far my favorite IDE - because it *looks* like Windows more than anything. Inspired by Marcus's post, I'm willing to give IDEA another try on my OS X - I probably won't get enough time in the 30 day trial to appreciate it (or switch to it), but I'll make an attempt. BTW, I've actually heard that many of the "IDEA Rules" advocates actually got it for free - at least some OS projects' committers got a free copy. I'm sure if there was a 6 month trial version, and folks actually got addicted to it (like I am with Eclipse), they'd sell more copies. I'd pay for Eclipse right now if it weren't free.

Later: I already have one pet peeve - why can't I install IDEA in an "idea" folder rather than in "IntelliJ-IDEA-3.0.5". I install all my "tools" in /opt/dev/tools (i.e. /opt/dev/tools/eclipse) and this makes it very easy to tar xzf any new versions over old ones - and it just looks better. I hate when installers make you install their apps to a particular directory.