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I am using Eclipse. I find it powerful but with my project it freezes or closes without warning.

I have been advised to use vim and I want to give it a try. Are there any plugins for vim that I can use to make the tool more productive and easy to use like Eclipse? I have tried Eclim, but it is just as memory hungry as Eclipse.

I use Java for product development.

Features I am looking for

  • Code completion
  • Refactoring
  • ProjectView
  • Java and HTML templates
  • File search
  • Debugging
  • Maven integration
Philipp Wendler
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  • Your question is completely unclear. I wonder if it belongs to this forum. I guess its a ubuntu question. But in any case, please make it easy to understand your question. – Siddharth Jun 26 '12 at 05:25
  • Sorry i wrote it via mobile with spell aid in spanish. I wrote it again and think its clear now. –  Jun 26 '12 at 06:20
  • What is the configuration of your desktop/laptop ? And what is the size of your project src folder ? – Siddharth Jun 26 '12 at 06:30
  • I have improved the formatting of your question. You should get more relevant responses. Hopefully!! – Siddharth Jun 26 '12 at 06:33
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    @Siddharth I don't see how this is related with Ubutnu *at all*. – WhyNotHugo Jun 26 '12 at 06:40
  • @Hugo, agree. Before the edit, that is what I felt. – Siddharth Jun 26 '12 at 07:08
  • If you are not happy with Eclipse, you can try Jetbrains IntelliJ. In my opinion it's faster and better IDE. Jetbrains have free, community version to download from their site. However, it lacks some important features which standard edition has. Anyway, for JavaSE development it should be enough. – omnomnom Jun 26 '12 at 07:10
  • ToSiddhart My laptop is a VAIO-CW, 8GB RAM, Pentium dual Core 2.1GHZ, NVIDIA G210m. Sometimes I feel like I have 1GB of RAM with eclipse. ToPiotrekDe I'll give it a try. If it is good and not free, I will buy it. I just want job to get done. ToEverybody By the way, im using ubuntu 12.04. So I think is kinda ubuntu stuff. –  Jun 26 '12 at 12:40
  • Instead of simply closing this, why not convert it to a "community wiki"? – ILMostro_7 Aug 03 '15 at 09:34

3 Answers3

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Every programming tool has its strength's and weaknesses. Eclipse by and large is very useful and neat tool to use for large projects also. You should try to fine tune it to perform better.

Try How can you speed up Eclipse? and google for it

As for vim, frankly don't try to make one tool look like the other, instead adapt yourself to the tool. This way you will use all its strengths.

For eg, to use vi, it's crazy in the beginning, but once you get used to it, you can't move away. Gedit feels like a baby's toy :).

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Siddharth
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  • I felt curious and downloaded the Candidate Release of Eclipse Juno and installed the plugins I use. It just doesn't look like eclipse. I'ts faster now out of the box, and UI is niecer, IMHO. All these without the trick to speed it, which I'm about to try to get it faster even. –  Jun 26 '12 at 13:44
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vim isn't an IDE.

It's a text editor, you could get a few plugins to help you, but it's simply not and IDE and can't match eclipse competing as something it's not.

WhyNotHugo
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Echoing the other answers, there's no way to turn Vim into a serious Java IDE. The person who told you to switch to Vim either doesn't know the differences between a text editor and an IDE or simply pulled a prank on you.

All the features needed to make a Java IDE are more or less dependent on an engine that understands and checks your code as you type and other parts of an integrated Java-specific toolchain. None of this is available in Vim which is only a text editor. It's the best one but it's far from being an IDE.

I guess you could use cscope/ctags to navigate your code and JavaComplete for omni-completion but you can completely forget about refactoring, debugging and maven integration.

romainl
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    vim cscope and ctag users will swear by it, eclipse is crap to them.. :) and vice versa. – Siddharth Jun 26 '12 at 08:20
  • I don't know about Java but in C++, ctags get often confused about scope of method. Particularly, if you have the same method in different objects, it jumps on the first in the list, not necessarily the one you want. (And it should not be surprising since ctags is only searching using the name) – Xavier T. Jun 26 '12 at 09:15
  • Yes, neither ctags nor cscope "understand" your code. ctags, cscope and omni-completion are not great substitutes for their real IDE's counterparts in such a context. – romainl Jun 26 '12 at 09:51