A work around for Linux users

[carrillo694]

Originally Posted by frasnow

Sure it's possible, but why give up powerful tools like autocomplete, visible javadoc, Go to Source, tabs of code, quick access to the FIRST libraries, etc.? Some old time programmers consider those a crutch, but they're actually just wasting time doing things the slow way. Yes, I know some people think the command line makes you look cool, and it's probably a good learning exercise to make this happen. I still ask, why?

theNerd did say he was using Vim -- plenty of plugins exist for autocompletion, going to source, etc., and tabbing comes built in

Vim can be configured to do all the NetBeans magic, and in a fraction of the time it takes to load NetBeans. But that doesn't mean it is easy, or that it makes development easier than NetBeans.

As StevenB notes, for Java we are already supplied with the build scripts (.xml files) -- we just have to use `ant` to properly. Incidentally, the build scripts are rather complicated. A mentor on my team created a visualization to describe the control flow (explained further here.) But you can also get a clue as to the fields from the .xml build scripts that are being invoked, and the order of their usage, by looking at NetBeans output when you Build your code. Brief statements, such as "flashapp:," "deploy:," etc. are printed to stdout as `ant` runs the .xml build scripts.

Also, to clarify, it's not the source code itself that you would FTP to the robot -- it's a .jar file generated from the `ant` build scripts that resides in the `suite` folder of your NetBeans project.

[carrillo694]

Well, it seems this was 100 times easier than I thought it was!

For Java:

1. Go to the root folder of your NetBeans project, where you should see a "build.xml"
2. in the console, simply type `ant deploy` without the quotes

It's that easy! At least I think so; I need to try it in the lab on Monday. But it appears to be giving me the EXACT same output that the stdout console of NetBeans does after I tell it to Build the project!

[theNerd]

Originally Posted by carrillo694

in the console, simply type `ant deploy` without the quotes

Are you referring to "the console" as the terminal/command prompt (I'm assuming the task is being completed on a Linux/Unix based system)?

[carrillo694]

Originally Posted by theNerd

Are you referring to "the console" as the terminal/command prompt (I'm assuming the task is being completed on a Linux/Unix based system)?

Yes.

[theNerd]

Originally Posted by carrillo694

theNerd did say he was using Vim -- plenty of plugins exist for autocompletion, going to source, etc., and tabbing comes built in

Could you send me the know how on how to do this? I've been trying to get my hands on how to do auto completion for any code (mainly c++ c and java), going to source, and possibly an equivalent to that error checking thing that Netbeans does.

[carrillo694]

Originally Posted by theNerd

Could you send me the know how on how to do this? I've been trying to get my hands on how to do auto completion for any code (mainly c++ c and java), going to source, and possibly an equivalent to that error checking thing that Netbeans does.

For good autocompletion:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2540

For going to source:
http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=273

For more fancy IDE-style features for Vim (but I have not gotten this to work well for me):
http://eclim.org/

I have not yet found a good preprocessor to find errors before they happen in C++/Java, although I do have one for Python called python.vim.