First Steps with RAD 6.0

Since we spent millions on Websphere we’re now having integrate RAD 6.0 for developing into WebSphere Portal and utilizing JSF. I kept hearing bad things from developers about how you were tied into the RAD way of doing things. And phrases like ‘Drink the IBM Kool-Aid’ or ‘Swallow the Blue Pill’ abounded. Some of the things which seemed painful were:

Based on Eclipse 3.0 so we have to step back to Java 1.4.2.
To build a web project you have to have wonderful directories like <div class="codecolorer-container text vibrant overflow-off" style="overflow:auto;white-space:nowrap;">

1

JavaSource
```
</div>
```

and

<div class="codecolorer-container text vibrant overflow-off" style="overflow:auto;white-space:nowrap;">
  <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
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      <td class="line-numbers">
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          1<br />
        </div>
      </td>
      
      <td>
        <div class="text codecolorer">
          WebSource
        </div>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</div>

at the top level.</li> 

  * You can only deploy through RAD.</ol> 

The truth turned out to be not quite so bad. We still can&#8217;t do any 1.5 specific things so no generics, enums or the like. The default IBM directories are there, but you can add your own, so there horrible names are a little more palatable. Why exactly did the default

<div class="codecolorer-container text vibrant overflow-off" style="overflow:auto;white-space:nowrap;">
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          1<br />
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      <td>
        <div class="text codecolorer">
          /src
        </div>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</div>

directory have to be

<div class="codecolorer-container text vibrant overflow-off" style="overflow:auto;white-space:nowrap;">
  <table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0">
    <tr>
      <td class="line-numbers">
        <div>
          1<br />
        </div>
      </td>
      
      <td>
        <div class="text codecolorer">
          JavaSource
        </div>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</div>

? Finally I was able to add a build.xml file and it recognized it as ant specific. It turned out I had to change perspectives to the Java perspective to actually run a target, but that&#8217;s just one of those annoying Eclipse things. So now I&#8217;m pretty sure I can deploy without using some god awful RAD wizard.

Eclipse just isn&#8217;t a very user friendly IDE. Just to add a file I had to go through the following menus:

<pre>'Right Click' > New > Simple > File</pre>

That took me about 10 minutes of hunting and I thought I was actually going to have to add build.xml at the file system level just to add a single file. As long as I can still run a normal ant build file and have it deploy in Cruisecontrol I&#8217;ll be OK with it. I&#8217;ll probably force myself to run it as a default IDE for a while so I can help developers with workarounds and then I&#8217;m running screaming back to IntelliJ.