recommended IDE for developing openjdk?

Ty Young youngty1997 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 18 12:36:45 UTC 2021


FWIW, I use Netbeans. It *technically* works from my experience but 
there are some issues:


* There is no auto-configure(read: auto *bash configure*) or project 
settings for multiple build types and customization. You'll have to do 
those yourself through the command line.

* A bug was introduced which prevents any application using the Swing  
GTK L&F from starting on some distros based on and including Arch Linux. 
You can get it to work still by copying folder from another install that 
doesn't use the GTK L&F or by using command line switches.

* If the OpenJDK source files are on an FUSE drive(NTFS on Linux, for 
example) then Netbeans will fail to clean due to remaining .fuse_hidden 
files in jdk/lib if that JDK build is used as a Java Platform. You can 
manually delete these but Netbeans for some reason can't.

* Netbeans doesn't seem to handle(read: see at all) API changes between 
Java Platforms correctly and as a result you have to make the 
built-from-source JDK your default JDK and restart Netbeans to see API 
changes that you make.

* Netbeans likes to randomly expand the java.base module's 
/share/classes directory leaf for some weird reason.

* Netbeans will mark classes as having compilation errors even after 
doing an initial build such as in java.util.concurrent.Semaphore and 
java.security.AlgorithmConstraints. The OpenJDK source will still 
compile despite these errors just fine, even from within Netbeans 
itself. Looking at the files that supposedly have errors shows that it's 
either because of:


A. instanceof preview feature


or


B. Netbeans fails to correctly read and/or process a Java file resulting 
in Netbeans thinking constructors need identifiers(e.g. 
java.util.concurrent.Semaphore's Sync abstract static class's 
constructor) or entire method signatures being misinterpreted(e.g. every 
method in  java.security.AlgorithmConstraints).


* Netbeans from my experience has a cascading error issue where an error 
somewhere in a different part of a project will cause Netbeans to 
incorrectly see errors somewhere else, which may explain the above.


* Netbeans has really bad general bugs with refactoring. Don't use it if 
you can help it.


Basically, all you have to do is do an initial configure via:


bash configure


and build via:


make images


and then load any of the modules under "src" from within Netbeans. 
Netbeans will show a different non-folder icon(cup?) for the JDK modules 
that you can load.


Hope this helps.


On 1/15/21 2:32 PM, Clemens Eisserer wrote:
> Hi,
>
> About 10 years ago I used eclipse to work on OpenJDK, however I would like
> to get rid of it because of its slow/ugly user interface.
> I wonder, are there any recommendations which IDE to use these days?
> I gave IntelliJ a try but having not used it that much (except for some
> fairly standard maven based projects) I failed to configure it correctly,
> however I haven't tried Netbeans still.
>
> So to make it short: Which IDE is known to cope well with working on the
> OpenJDK codebase?
> And are there detailed instructions available for creating an openjdk
> project with intellij?
> Or would I be better off using netbeans?
>
> Thank, Clemens


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