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Need help selecting the right tools

 
Greenhorn
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Hello,

I am relatively new to Java, and I find myself overwhelmed by the number of IDE's and build, test, and documentation tools available. I am hoping someone can give me advice on the best tools for my situation.

I am writing a Swing GUI for a previously developed C model. I am using SWIG (Simplified Wrapper Interface Generator) to auto-generate JNI wrappers for the C code. The Swing part of the application will probably end up being less than 10,000 lines of code. I'm being pushed to roll out the application as soon as possible. So I can't devote huge amounts of time to learning new tools. I also want to make this application as simple as possible for my successors to maintain. I'm concerned that relying on a bunch of different tools will make maintenance a nightmare. Finally, any tool I use would need to be free and/or open-source.

Based on those constraints (a long list, I know), can anyone tell me what tools would be of the most use to me? I am already using Subversion for version control. I looked into NetBeans a few months ago, and while it seems like a very powerful tool, I'm afraid it would be problematic to integrate the NetBeans-generated Java code with the C and SWIG code.

Best,
Catherine
 
Catherine Dunn
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Oh, one last thing. My GUI involves a lot of custom painting. That's another reason I think NetBeans (and other drag and drop GUI builders) may not save me that much work.
 
author and iconoclast
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Hi,

Welcome to JavaRanch!

First, a bit of business: you may not have read our naming policy on the way in. It requires that you use a full, real (sounding) first and last name for your display name. Initials aren't enough. You can change your display name here. Thanks!

Now, as to your question: you're right to be concerned that code generated by any GUI builder is hard to maintain. GUI builders really aren't that prevalent in the Java world, anyway, and most people don't use them. So choose your IDE based on other features, and simply write the GUI code yourself. That said, IDEs like NetBeans and Eclipse have a definite learning curve; if you're really just doing a one-off thing there are simpler tools like JPad.
 
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