Gone are the days when IDE integration always just works... Maven and Eclipse fight, neither quite gets along perfectly with Groovy, git branch switches (sooo nice) can be slow, etc etc.
But with a bit of a dance the IDE can still be your friend, making it much easier to run tests and debug.
Here are some general tips:
Add your favourite plugins for Maven, Groovy, Git and JavaScript, if necessary
Turn off auto-rebuild if it bothers you
Don't always trust the IDE to build correctly; if you hit a snag, do a command-line mvn clean install (optionally with -DskipTests) then refresh the project (optionally regenerate dependencies). Sometimes closing projects (so that it reads from your ~/.m2/repository) helps.
See instructions below for specific IDEs.
If you‘re an Eclipse user, you’ll probably want the Groovy, Maven (m2e), Git, JavaScript and TestNG plugins. Via Help -> Install New Software, or from the Eclipse Marketplace, we recommend:
{% readj eclipse.include.md %}
As of this writing, with Eclipse 4.2, m2e 1.1, and GrEclipse 2.7, the codebase has been imported (Import -> Existing Maven Projects) and successfully run with no errors. However this isn't always the case.
If you encounter issues, the following hints may be helpful:
If m2e reports import problems, it is usually okay (even good) to mark all to “Resolve All Later”. The build-helper connector is useful if you‘re prompted for it, but do not install the Tycho OSGi configurator (this causes show-stopping IAE’s, and we don't need Eclipse to make bundles anyway). You can manually mark as permanently ignored certain errors; this updates the pom.xml (and should be current).
m2e likes to put excluding="**" on `resourcesdirectories; if you're seeing funny missing files (things like not resolving jclouds/aws-ec2 locations or missing WARs), try building clean install from the command-line then doing Maven -> Update Project (clean uses a maven-replacer-plugin to fix.classpath``s). Alternatively you can go through and remove these manually in Eclipse (Build Path -> Configure) or the filesystem, or use the following command to remove these rogue blocks in the generated .classpath files:
find . -name .classpath -exec sed -i.bak 's/[ ]*..cluding="[\*\/]*\(\.java\)*"//g' {} \;
Getting the web console project to build nicely can be trickier.
You may need to ensure src/main/{java,resources} is created in each project dir, if (older versions) complain about missing directories, and the same for src/test/{java,resources} if there are tests (src/test exists):
find . \( -path "*/src/main" -or -path "*/src/test" \) -exec echo {} \; -exec mkdir -p {}/{java,resources} \;
You may need to add the groovy nature (or even java nature) to projects; with some maven-eclipse plugins this works fine, but for others (older ones) you may need to handcraft these (either right-click the project in the Package Explorer and choose Configure, or edit the .project manually adding it to the project properties). The tips for jclouds maven-eclipse might be helpful.
If the pain starts to be too much, come find us on IRC #brooklyncentral or elsewhere and we can hopefully share our pearls. (And if you have a tip we haven't mentioned please let us know that too!)
Tips from Intelli-J users wanted!
Tips from Netbeans users wanted!