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Not like you would hear it from us first, but IntelliJ IDEA 11.1 was recently released and we’ve released a new plugin for JRebel to match it: http://plugins.intellij.net/plugin/?id=4441

Ok, why do I need a new JRebel plugin?

The new version of IntelliJ IDEA has incompatible changes in the debugger API (http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-81452). It’s important for us that we maintain support and development for the older versions of IDEA as well. Unfortunately, this means we need to fork the plugin and present a new 1.4.x version for IDEA 11.1+.

Do I get anything with the new plugin?

Yes, this presents us with a great opportunity: we can now use all of the newer APIs that we previously did not for compatibility reasons. We will still support and develop the plugin for versions 8 through 11.0.2, but it will be version locked at 1.3.x.

We understand the possibility for confusion, but there are many positives for this as well. We can stop working with older APIs that we only used to maintain backward compatibility, and start using all of the new APIs that allow us to provide a better experience for our users. For example, now you can use the new “fancy file” dialog system, which includes autocomplete. Word.

How do I upgrade to the new JRebel plugin?

You need to first uninstall the existing JRebel plugin, as IntelliJ will natively install over the old version and try to use the same plugins. This won’t work, and the JRebel plugin will be disabled. Either uninstall the JRebel plugin through the Settings->Plugins window or delete the plugin in the USER_HOME/.IntelliJIDEA11/config/plugins/jr-ide-idea directory.

Then install the plugin again through the Plugins window in Settings (http://zeroturnaround.com/intellij-idea-jrebel-tutorial-formerly-javarebel/).

What if I want to keep using an older version of IntelliJ?

Even though the new IntelliJ version (11.1) installs on top of the previous one (11.0.x), you can still separate the configurations. Here’s how: copy the USER_HOME/.IntelliJIDEA11 directory to USER_HOME/.IntelliJIDEA111 directory. Now, you need to tell the new IntelliJ instance that it has to use the new location for the settings. This is done in INTELLIJ_HOME/bin/idea.properties file. The idea.properties file contains a number of parameters that point to the settings directory:

idea.config.path=${user.home}/.IntelliJIdea/config
idea.system.path=${user.home}/.IntelliJIdea/system
idea.plugins.path=${user.home}/.IntelliJIdea/config/plugins
idea.log.path=${user.home}/.IntelliJIdea/system/log

You just need to change it to this:

idea.config.path=${user.home}/.IntelliJIDEA111/config
idea.system.path=${user.home}/.IntelliJIDEA111/system
idea.plugins.path=${user.home}/.IntelliJIDEA111/config/plugins
idea.log.path=${user.home}/.IntelliJIDEA111/system/log

Now you will be able to keep 2 versions of IntelliJ with different set of plugins. This is a very specific case and hardly anyone would like to follow such a setup, but just in case, I wanted to let everyone to know that it is possible.

That’s pretty big news.  JRebel for free?

Now, you may be thinking,

“But how can a company that survives off of their JRebel revenue (and employs >25 people) release a free version of the productivity tool? It even won a bunch of awards (JOLT Productivity Award, JAX 2011 Most Innovative Java Technology, Estonian Innovation 2011, and one more we can’t talk about yet)! Is their management team totally crazy?”

Here’s some background:

• We want to make a major impact on the Java Industry.
• We’ve collected data that says ~17.5% of every coding hour is spent building and redeploying.
• JRebel eliminates the need to build and redeploy.
• It’s been reported that there are about ~9 million java developers globally.

Imagine if those 9 million developers code on projects for 5 hours per day, over a 20 day period. That’s 900 million work hours, in what vaguely represents a month of work. JRebel could save 153 million hours of wasted time, per month, if every java developer in the world was using it. That’s more than 17,000 years of development time saved, every month. But JRebel costs about $1 per developer, per day – so some people can’t afford it. We want to change that. For about a year now, we’ve been thinking about different ways that we could give away JRebel for free – with one caveat – we can’t cannibalize our revenue and bankrupt the company — after all, we’ve got customers to think about, support cases to handle, and lots of new features to add – if we can’t do that stuff, then we’d be letting a lot of people down, and no one wants that. So our thoughts were… do we release a free version of JRebel…

• …with a limited feature set? If so, how do we separate the features?
• …for a limited amount of time?  We already offer a free 30-day evaluation…
• …and ask for donations?
• …that is free for a certain audience?  If so, what audience?  Hmmm… maybe we’re on to something here….

Introducing JRebel Social

JRebel Social is free to use for non-commercial development, and the only thing you need to do to use it, is let your network know it exists, once per month. Simply login and register using your Twitter or Facebook account and then pickup your online or offline license keys. As icing on the cake, you can see how much time you’ve saved by eradicating redeploys (and builds) from your Java development process, on your personal dashboard. You need to Download JRebel 4.5 to connect to Social. Try it out, and let others know what you think: https://social.jrebel.com I’m personally curious to see what will come of the thousands of hours that JRebel Social will save for the Java industry this year.. feel free to let me know what you’ll do with the extra time!

Click me for details on the 4.5 release.

David

Oh PS — we’re hiring! Engineers & Developers in Estonia, Marketing in Prague, and a Sales Team in Boston. Feel free to email us at jobs@zeroturnaround.com or Join The Rebellion

Some time ago we ran a survey asking a few questions about the build process, specifically the tools that are used to do incremental builds and how much time those builds take. We had over 600 responses, so now it’s time to count the results.

This is the first time that we’ve published results on the incremental build process, so the information is more likely to serve as a guide than an authoritative information source. That being said, the information is still quite interesting, and if it serves to start a conversation that improves the process of even one team, then we’re proud to have helped out. If you haven’t answered the 3-question survey yet, take two minutes and go for it – and do let your community know about it – as more answers trickle in we’ll update this post with the new data. If you’d like to play with the results on your own we‘ve provided all the data and our calculations in a handy Excel sheet that you can download here.

(more…)

We’re looking into incremental builds — trying to document the differences in popularity & productivity between using tools like Ant and Maven versus IDEs.  We haven’t seen a study like this before, so thanks for taking a minute to fill this out.  If you’re interested in winning a free license of JRebel (formerly JavaRebel), include your email address in the optional email section.

For the study, click here.

Thanks,

Dave