I was able to get JavaWordCount running with a local instance under IntelliJ.
In order to do so I needed to use maven to package my code and call String[] jars = { "/SparkExamples/target/word-count-examples_2.10-1.0.0.jar" }; sparkConf.setJars(jars); After that the sample ran properly and in the debugger I could set break points in the main. However when I do something like JavaRDD<String> words = lines.flatMap( new WordsMapFunction()); where WordsMapFunction is a separate class like public static class WordsMapFunction implements FlatMapFunction<String, String> { private static final Pattern SPACE = Pattern.compile(" "); public Iterable<String> call(String s) { String[] split = SPACE.split(s); for (int i = 0; i < split.length; i++) { split[i] = toUpperCase(split[i]); } return Arrays.asList(split); } } Breakpoints set in WordsMapFunction are never hit. Most interesting functionality in the problems I am trying to solve if in the FlatMapFunction and the Function2 code and this is the functionality I will need to examine in more detail. Has anyone figured out how to configure a project to hit breakpoints in these functions??