Swinging Java IDEs

This entry on JavaLobby has caught my eye a few days ago. It talks about a RAD-race at JavaPolis and the fact that the top three teams were using JDeveloper. During the course of (so) many flamewars on "which IDE is better", it's always Eclipse vs. NetBeans vs. IntelliJ (and don't start another one in the comments by telling that your favourite IDE should be the first in the list). I have started reading a little bit more about JDeveloper - it's free (but not open-source) and it's pure Swing application. The download size is comparable to that of the above three "flamewar heroes" (about 51MB without JDK 5.0), so you should definitely keep this option in mind.

After showing how to put watermark on IntelliJ (described here) and NetBeans (described here and here), it's JDeveloper's turn to take a ride.

Here is what you need to do in order to run JDeveloper under Substance (or any other) look-and-feel (originally described in Oracle forums):

• Put the latest substance.jar (and any of its plugins) under $JDEV_DIR$/jdev/lib/patches directory (don't create sub-directories).
• Locate settings.xml file under $JDEV_DIR$/jdev/system/oracle.ide.10.1.NNN directory (replace NNN by the installed version - it's 10.1.3.34.12 for the latest drop of 10.1.3).
• Locate the lafClass tag and put the following value: org.jvnet.substance.SubstanceLookAndFeel.
• For additional Substance parameters:
  • Locate jdev.conf file under $JDEV_DIR$/jdev/bin directory
  • For every VM flag, add a line prefixed with AddVMOption at the end of the configuration file

Now, double-click the jdeveloper.exe (on Windows) - and voila (click for full-size image):



The parameters in the jdev.conf file are:

AddVMOption -Dsubstancelaf.theme=org.jvnet.substance.theme.SubstanceSunsetTheme 
AddVMOption -Dsubstancelaf.watermark=org.jvnet.substance.watermark.SubstanceImageWatermark 
AddVMOption -Dsubstancelaf.watermark.image=H:\JProjects\substance\temp\KingArthur.png
AddVMOption -Dsubstancelaf.watermark.tobleed
AddVMOption -Dsubstancelaf.useDecorations
AddVMOption -Dsubstancelaf.heapStatusPanel
AddVMOption -Duser.language=en
AddVMOption -Duser.country=US