Keith Kim’s Blog

Netbeans and Maven, and Eclipse Europa issues

Posted by Keith under Java

I’ve installed and I am exploring Netbeans 6.0 beta 2. So far, it’s pretty good, with all the goodies in one installation. (Downloaded “ALL” included package.)

Maven
One thing to be careful is - if there’s a maven project in CVS or SVN, then add the Maven plug-in first, then check out the project. It’ll handle the module as Maven project. Checking out first and installing the plug-in doesn’t work.

Plug-ins
Eclipse is more flexible in many ways including adding any plugins from any sites, but I like the way Netbeans handles the plugins. It loads up list of plugins and lets you choose the ones you want to install. It also let you add 3rd party sites for plug-ins.

Another thing I like it about is how it handles project directory. Eclipse updates files in .meta folder for each project (correct me if I’m wrong), and moving around the project directory is a bit hassle. And when something goes wrong, I have to use fresh copy of Eclipse, or remove the .meta folder and set things up from scratch.

Eclipse still have a lot of advantages; and the biggest advantage is supporting multiple languages quite well.

Problems with Eclipse Europa and Tomcat
The Europa version’s WTP has a serious problem with Tomcat — if web application consumes large amount of memory, it’s easy to get heap memory (out of memory) error, and there is no way to increase the Tomcat memory. (note: not the memory settings for Eclipse IDE, but for Tomcat.) I haven’t found the solution to this problem so far. And, if I forget to shutdown the Tomcat through IDE and restart Eclipse, it doesn’t let you “shutdown” through IDE. I have to use shutdown.sh or shutdown.bat from console. Eclipse 3.2 doesn’t have any of these issues with Tomcat Sysdeo plugin, and I’m going to go back to 3.2 if I can’t find the solution soon for the memory issue at least. I’ve spent too much time to find the solution and failed.
This has been resolved. See:
http://blog.keithkim.com/2007/10/eclipse-europa-tomcat-memory-issue-solved/

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