IDEs and Editors

[Christopher Mackie]

These lists periodically get questions about Java editors/IDEs for use
with Swarm and other modeling frameworks.  If I'm working in JavaSwarm
or RePast, my personal preference is Eclipse (www.eclipse.org), but
there are many other good tools available, in a wide range of
philosophies and price ranges.

The reason I write today is that O'Reilly has just posted a useful
introduction to Eclipse, covering the project mission, installation, and
basic use.  If anyone's interested in giving the Eclipse IDE a try, or
just wants to learn more about the project, the article is a good
starting point.

http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/12/11/eclipse.html

To create a Swarm or RePast project in Eclipse (this assumes that
Swarm/RePast are already installed and working properly), follow the
instructions in the article for creating a new project.  When you reach
Step 3 in the text (corresponding to the graphic titled 'Third page of
the New Project wizard'), you should:

--Click the 'Libraries' tab
--Click the 'Add External JARs' button
--Browse to the location of the Swarm/RePast .jar(s) and add it/them
--Repeat for any other jars you need for the project

That's all there is to it: no multiline classpath to specify (well,
there is, but Eclipse manages it for you--and even creates a very nice
Ant buildfile along the way).

Note that Eclipse is pure-java: you need to have a JVM installed before
you unpack Eclipse, or nothing will work.  The Eclipse pages (and the
article) say it's written to work with Java 1.3.x, and that's true, but
it works fine with java 1.4.1_01 as well: I haven't seen a Java
1.4-related bug in months.

Hope this helps,  --Chris

=========================
Christopher J. Mackie
Princeton University
address@hidden


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