Java Tools that Visual Studio Offers
Over the past few years, Microsoft has been working hard to make Java development on Visual Studio more enjoyable. Below are some of the top tools we offer for Java developers:
1. Debugging and Diagnostics
2. Profiling and Performance
3. Project Management
4. Code Metrics
5. Refactoring and Code Generation
6. Formatting and Code Styles
7. Version Control
8. Dependency Management
If you’re a developer, you spend most of your day in an IDE. I know I do. Visual Studio is a powerful IDE which can be used for many languages and frameworks. Today, I’m going to be focusing on the Java tools that Visual Studio offers.
The first thing you will notice about Visual Studio is the ability to open multiple projects at the same time without having to create separate work spaces. This makes it easy to view different projects and classes side by side, or even copy lines of code between projects. If you are unfamiliar with Java, the IntelliSense feature will help you easily find methods and classes that can be used in your project.
If you’re tired of writing code over and over again, there are multiple ways to save time with Visual Studio’s Java tools. The Code Snippets Manager allows you to create a library of code snippets that are accessible as soon as you start typing their keyword name. You can also create your own custom snippets which can include parameters and tab stops so they can be easily customized. The Code Snippets Manager also allows you to share snippets with other developers through email or version control systems such as Git or Subversion.
Another great feature that Visual Studio offers is refactoring support for Java files.
This month, I’m writing about some of the Java tools that Visual Studio offers. I’ll cover features that make coding easier and faster.
In Part 1, we’ll look at refactoring and debugging capabilities that come with the standard VS install. In Part 2, we’ll cover productivity enhancements provided by a few extensions.
Refactoring Support
Visual Studio comes with automatic code refactoring to help you maintain a healthy code base over time. For example, Visual Studio can automatically change the case of your identifiers or extract a method from a selected code block. To access these features, right click your code and select Refactor This; then choose the desired refactoring operation from the sub-menu.
To learn more about VS refactoring capabilities, see Code Refactoring in Visual Studio on MSDN.
Visual Studio is a powerful IDE for any developer, and includes features that make it a great IDE for Java developers. In this blog post I’ll cover some of the various tools and features that are available in Visual Studio.
I’ll start off with the basics:
Java Language Support – Visual Studio offers syntax highlighting, code snippets, auto-completion, IntelliSense and more for Java. This is useful if you’re writing your Java code in Visual Studio’s text editor instead of another editor such as Eclipse.
Code Navigation – You can use the Search Everywhere feature to quickly find specific classes, interfaces, methods or fields within your project or even external libraries. In addition to this, the Navigate To menu lets you find any class, interface or method in your project by searching through words that are contained in the name of file. For example, you can type “string” and see every instance of String in your project. If there’s a specific file that you need to open, you can use the Open File dialog.
The Debugger – The core debugging engine allows you to easily debug your applications with breakpoints (including conditional breakpoints), step-in/over/out execution, hover over variables to show their current value and more
If you’re a Java developer working with Visual Studio, you have a number of features available to help you be more productive. This blog post describes some of the tools that are available for you to use and also describes some scenarios where these tools can be helpful.
Java Debugging Support:
Visual Studio supports debugging Java code that is running locally in a JVM (Java Virtual Machine), or remotely on a different machine than your development computer.
Local Java Debugging:
When debugging locally, the process being debugged is running on the same machine as your development computer. The debugger attaches to the JVM process and allows breakpoints, watches and other debugging features to work in the same way as they do when you are debugging C
Java is a language that many developers love to use. Whether you are building mobile applications, back end services, or front end websites, Java is a language that will be with us for years to come. Microsoft has done a fantastic job at making Visual Studio one of the best IDEs for working with Java. Here are just a few features that make developing in Java easy and fun.
Debugging
If you have ever used Eclipse for Java development, you are probably familiar with how difficult it can be to debug your code. Even though Eclipse has been around for years, we still run into issues when debugging on certain platforms. Microsoft has done a great job at building a robust debugger inside of Visual Studio. With the new Java Language Service in 2015, debugging your java code is now an even better experience because you can set breakpoints within your own source files as well as 3rd party Java libraries.
Refactoring
One of my favorite features of Visual Studio is IntelliSense. IntelliSense helps me write code faster by giving me context sensitive suggestions while I type. But IntelliSense does more than just give you suggestions; it also helps support refactoring operations such as Rename and Extract Method without having to open up
Visual Studio offers many tools to make your life easier as a developer. I have worked with several developers that are only aware of a few of these features, so I thought it would be a good idea to put together a list of some of the more useful ones and explain how to use them.
There are many tutorials on the internet that give more detailed explanations of each feature than will be given here, but this article is meant to be more of a reference tool.
Autocomplete: As you type, Visual Studio will try to guess what you are trying to type and offer suggestions. All you need to do is hit tab or enter for the suggestion that you want. This feature can save you time typing out long class or method names, or even entire lines of code.
Parameter Help: When using methods and classes that require parameters, Visual Studio can help remind you what parameters are available, their data types and also the order they should be in. To use this feature all you need to do is type the name of the method/class and then press ctrl+spacebar. This will bring up a box listing all available parameters. You can then select which parameter you want by pressing enter or double-clicking it with your mouse.
Code Snipp
