Alan Chandler wrote:
I have decided the time has come to learn java and use it to develop some web
based applications. In particular I have a family tree project I want to
conduct.
I am a complete newbie as far as java is concerned.
I have two debian environments.
Server: Runs Sarge - and is running Apache2 and Postgres. I will want the
ultimate application to run on here (on Tomcat?) and provide its UI via the
web site and use Postgres database to store its data.
Apache runs several virtual hosts - one is my current external web site for
http: access, and also a separate one for https: access I also run two
internal (to my lan web sites). Since I want my relatives to be able to add
information to my family try from external - I will use one of them for my
"production" version of the application (depends on security controls I
decide to adopt). I will also run the "development" version of the
application on one of the internal web sites.
Workstation: Runs Debian Unstable with KDE as my desktop.
So my questions are:
1) What tools do I need to develop the application. This includes code
editiing, build environment, unit testing, I tried to setup eclipse on my
workstation but there are unsatisfied dependencies (java runtime?).
[Assume I can choose my configuration management environment - subversion
probably (and especially if its integrated into an IDE) - but I am also
considering others]
2) What run time environment
[I am assuming from my current position of ignorance that I want to develop
servlets and jsp pages for this application].
Obviously all this from standard debian packages if that is possible
I realize that I am about to become really unpopular here but... (if
you're prone to knee jerk reactions I would stop reading now if I were
you) avoid the open source Java implementations like the plague. I tried
one (inadvertently) about 6 weeks ago and I was surprised how much was
implemented. Unfortunately I ran into a bug in the implementation that
cost me a lot of development time and it has put me off the open source
VM's for good.
As far as the closed source VMs go I would recommend you go for the
latest Sun VM. It's fast (for Java) and stable. If you bought a book on
Java make sure it covers the changes in Java 1.5 (Java 5) as there were
quite a few - some of which are rather nice.
On the development environment front you have two choices Ecplise or
NetBeans. I use netbeans as it is better, IMHO, for web development
(built in tomcat, junit testing, and ant build scripts) but a lot of
people like eclipse. Running netbeans is easy. It comes with a graphical
installer or you can just grab the tar ball and just unpack it where
ever you want (I stick mine in /usr/local). You can choose the VM used
by netbeans with the --jdkhome flag eg:
/usr/local/netbeans-4.1/bin/netbeans --jdkhome /usr/local/jdk1.5.0_03
As for installing Java I recommend using java-package. It's quick and
easy and seems to work with all the modern VM packages.
You might also like to install the command line ant from the Debian package.
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