DonsProxy Running Commentary

This is where I make observations and make commentary on the experience of making DonsProxy. Thoughts about products, approaches, etc.

IDEs

I have used many IDEs over the years - I've been coding since I was 16 - which, as of 2008, is 28 years. Many of the tools I've used for coding weren't IDEs. Yes, I've even used a card punch.

These days, I primarly use Eclipse, both at work and at home. Is it awesome, perfect, and better than your IDE in every way? No. I have gripes about Eclipse, to be sure, but it works for me, and that's a good thing. I'm exploring other options for the GUI part of DonsProxy, including IntelliJ and NetBeans.

Revision Control

Again, I've used a number of these: TOTAL, SourceSafe, ClearCase, CVS, and now Subversion. I converted my repository from CVS to Subversion after DonsProxy 1.1. I have a lot of projects in source control, and after some reading, took the defaults when running cvs2svn. I should have read more, because I don't really want the "monolithic" layout, which is the default, I want the "multiple projects" layout. Fortunately, I can convert a project with only 20 or 30 simple, 200-character svn commands. ;)

I waited a long time to convert to Subversion. At first, I was waiting for it to get stable. It is now, and has been for some time. But still, I waited. Why? Because of the Subclipse plugin. Not too long ago, a coworker (Do you think co-worker or cow-orker? I snicker every time.) told me about an alternative Eclipse Subversion plugin, Subversive. Not long after, I switched to Subversion, and use the Subversive plugin. I would have switched to Subversion a long time ago if Subclipse were more like Subversive.

GUI development

As I mentioned, I'm researching various options for GUI development. I use Eclipse as my IDE, and RCP is pretty awesome. But, it's not quite right for DonsProxy. For one thing, it's platform-specific. I'd have to build a version for Windows, another for Linux, and so forth. Not what I'm looking for in this case. Second, the exported packages are HUGE! Would you really want to download a 20MB file for DonsProxy? I hope to avoid that.

So, I've been looking at IntelliJ. The IntelliJ folks were nice enough to give me a license so that I can try it out. But, while it has nifty tools for GUI development, there's no File..New..Java GUI Application. Ah, well.

Also, I'm looking at NetBeans. In terms of a GUI development environment, NetBeans (6.1 Beta) is great. There's a File.. New Project..Java..Java Desktop Application. Just the ticket. I was able to quickly make a GUI that runs Proxy. Okay, so now, check it in to Subversion...oops. Hold it right there. Try as I might, I could not make NetBeans work happily with my Subversion repository. I use the svn+ssh URLs so that I don't have to stand up a web server just to use the repository. I could use svnserve, but that probably wouldn't make NetBeans happy. I just can't get it to stop complaining about ".svn/entries is missing." Some people have said that it's some kind of conflict with Cygwin, since my main dev box is a Windows/Cygwin box. I could remove Cygwin, but I hate to lobotomize my Windows install just to make NetBeans happy. I installed plink, as some suggested, but the error persists. Crap.

So, the next try is Jigloo plugin for Eclipse, which as I've already mentioned, works handily with Subversion, provided you're using Subversive. Jigloo's free for non-commercial use. That's me! So, I'll report back later on that.

One other note: this document seems very helpful regarding GUI decisions: SWT vs. Swing & Eclipse vs. NetBeans 5.0