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Re: Is JDEE moribund? Is Emacs a viable Java devel environment?


From: Tim X
Subject: Re: Is JDEE moribund? Is Emacs a viable Java devel environment?
Date: Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:15:06 +1000
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.0.92 (gnu/linux)

"eefacm@gmail.com" <eefacm@gmail.com> writes:

> On Apr 17, 6:15 am, Martin <nos...@nospam.net> wrote:
>> > [...] I subscribed to the jdee-users mailing list and
>> > posted about my problem.  After a few days without an answer, I mailed
>> > the package maintainer directly.  It's been two weeks now, and I
>> > haven't gotten any response, nor have I seen any traffic at all on the
>> > jdee-users list.  Does anyone still use it anymore?  If not, what
>> > other options for Java development on Emacs are there?
>
>> http://dir.gmane.org/search.php?match=jdee
>
> Yeah... I looked over the archives, and the last thread was in
> January, the one before that was last October, and the one before
> *that* was in March of last year, thirteen months ago.
>
> Is that all the interest JDEE has now?

I think you may need to be a bit careful judging things from how much is
posted. I've noticed a growing trend in evaluating packages by how
active their community is. This is at one level quite reasonable as it
shows how much interest there is in the project. However, it also has a
negative aspect. If a package/project has reached its targetted
objectives, particularly the objectives of the person who started the
project or is responsible for its maintenance and it is now in a stable
state, it may not be unreasonable to see little in the way of traffic on
the project it mailing lists/forums. 

I've got packages I've been running for nearly 10 years that have not
seen any significant updates at all. The packages could be improved, but
they essentially satisfy the requirements they were implemented to solve
and the improvements are just minor tweaks. 

Looking at traffic and guaging interest in a project will give you an
indication of how easily you may get assistance if required, but it may
not give you any real picture of the state of the package. The only real
way to do this is to install it and try it out. You may find that it
meets 80% of what your looking for and you can survive without the other
20% (or maybe  over time you can add that missing 20%). 

I do suspect interest in JDEE has declined since eclipse has become the
standard for java development. When JDEE was first implemented there
really wasn't anything out there that was any good and JDE provided a
really good java IDE. This is often how things go. Emacs, being as
extensible as it is, is often the first kid on the block to provide good
support for a new technology. However, over time, other solutions, which
are usually less extensible, but more targetted to a specific technology
come into existence. Often these new dedicated solutions borrow ideas
from the emacs solution, which to some extent can be viewed as a
prototype.

HTH

Tim

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au


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