Using an IDE to work on the Java library

[Mario Torre]

2017-06-05 18:30 GMT+02:00 Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com>:
> Sorry for what must seem like a newbie question...
>
> I've done almost all of my work on HotSpot, and have very little
> experience trying to use an IDE to work on the Java library.  Eclipse
> is fine when working on libraries outdie the JDK itself, but seems to
> want to look inside src.zip for its sources when debugging.  It would
> be really nice to be able to see (and edit) the real Java source files
> in jdk/java.base/.
>
> I suppose there must be some way to create a Project for an IDE, so
> that debugging the standard library is easy.  Is there some advice
> around somewhere?  What do people do?

I generally use a bit more manual approach but works better for me
because I know exactly where everything is and I don't have to trust
the IDEs. I basically just create a project with existing sources and
import various directories with the sources into the IDEs, basically
each directory that starts with "classes", this works for me in
IntelliJ, Eclipse and Netbeans, if you add the JVM you just compiled
they will follow its sources and you can make changes, and even
compare with another JDK. I found for this kind of work Netbeans to
work best and Eclipse second best, Netbeans seems to understand when
your application goes into the native code and debugging continues
into that (if you have the C code open as a separate project too),
without any special trick, I did write a quick guide some time ago
although you know all this stuff already:

https://neugens.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/debugging-the-jdk-with-gdb/

This guide is useful for command line gdb but you can attach with
Eclipse (and NetBeans!) too, although when it goes into native land
I'm sure you prefer the gdb console! :)

Cheers,
Mario
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