Building…

4 Comments Published August 24th, 2007 in Java, Life, universe and everything, Opinions Tags: .

Compiling...

The build of a component of the software I am working on, takes 15 minutes to complete… before, remember to stop the appserver, and after start it back again. Then login, and retest your steps with remote debugging…
The build system is a kind of proprietary module-based build, involving code generation for database, logging (!!!) etc. making 5 or more copies of every file, that you have to keep inside your eclipse project (making editing the right one more difficult, and having more place to be searched). I hate it with all of my heart.

Yes, I am using Eclipse, but only as editor: at the beginning I was trying to solve the problem: after a couple of days trying to configure the crazy project structure I gave up. This is first time I am unable to configure an IDE profitably to a Java project. I mean, to exploit hot code replacement in place debugging, compilation, refactoring, and all the quickness offered by modern IDEs. We can just use editor and code completion. Full stop. And run boring build every time.

Nothing to do: it will be much difficult and risky to extract a wise project structure from the current one; I think it will never be made.
I think this is #1 productivity and fragility problem in current project. This has been a chance to rethink how important is to have an intelligent project structure, build and development process.

We should bring a chessboard in office.

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4 Responses to “Building…”

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1 Uma Aug 24th, 2007 at 17:45

I completely relate to you…yes chessboard would be good. :)
2 David Aug 27th, 2007 at 15:20

I know exactly what you mean! And I did bring in a chessboard, although a virtual one, and almost got sacked for it…
But I finally found a good solution. I have now my Eclipse configured to perform at least incremental builds. The first time I build the system, or after every big change, I perform the complete lengthy build. But when I am developping, I only need to compile a couple of class files incrementally, and this is completely done by Eclipse when hitting the Ctrl-S hotkey. 2 seconds compilation, refactoring, hot code replacement, and so on. All is available.
You need to have your classpath correctly set, remove from it all that is creating problems, and have the output created in the same directory as the normal build. It took me almost a week to do it, and the first build that Eclipse is performing is really slow, but then it is worth it.
3 Luigi Aug 27th, 2007 at 17:10

I did the same, but our “build tool” changes the project structure automatically: adds and removes source folders and class path jars continuously when you start working on specific modules (every component has about 50-60 modules, with cross dependency between themselves on cvs head version. Most of the time the project doesn’t compile at all. The workspace is 1.76GB, 86876 files and 15768 folders: it’s the Hell). So, it’s almost impossible to setup a working environment in any IDE, because the working project structure changes continuously.
A coworker of mine thought to fix the build tool, but I don’t think it can be fixed: it’s badly thought at high level design, insane.

Nobody here is able to set up his IDE (Eclipse and IntelliJ), and we’re all Java veterans.

Developers that invented the build tool said they use emacs or other unix editor, “so, what’s the problem?”. The real programmer only uses vi and hex codes to instruct the CPU, I know…

I know, it sounds incredible that a java project cannot be set up in any IDE, but it’s true.
Without any doubt, it’s the worst tool I’ve ever seen. Try it, and you will love ant, maven, make, or bash/batch scripts. Incredible how this proprietary tool has been adopted silently by many developers that worked with it (and I think they are really many).

(Uma is a my collegue, but many guys here blame that tool. I cannot tell names for obvious reasons)