March of the Mac IDEs

Four Java development tools for Mac compared

By Dave Makower<br> Technical Editor: Doug Bell, JavaWorld.com, 08/01/96

When the first alpha versions of Java hit the Internet, developers who chose to work on the Macintosh platform felt more than a little left out. Soon, there were beta versions for Solaris, Windows 95, and Windows NT, but still only the vaguest of promises from Sun that a version for MacOS 7.5 was in the works. Nearly every day, it seemed, someone would post a message to the comp.lang.java newsgroup asking whether there was a version of Java for the Macintosh. (Such postings were met with angry responses from non-Mac-oriented readers as the months wore on.)

When I wrote my first Java applets, the only way I could see them run from home on my Power Mac was to use X server software over my 14.4 kbps modem connection to a university SPARCstation running Solaris. Fortunately, Mac users no longer have to use this method to develop and run Java applications and applets, thanks to four currently available tools: Natural Intelligence's Roaster, Sun's Java Developer's Kit, Symantec's Café, and from Metrowerks, the Java component of CodeWarrior. To varying degrees, all of these packages are either beta versions, "developer releases," or simply beta-quality software labeled as a final release (see Truth in advertising, below).

Regardless of where the blame for the delay lies (see JavaWorld editor-in-chief Michael O'Connell's May 1996 editorial), Java has been a long time coming for the Mac. As new technologies have become ascendant in the past few years, Mac users have become accustomed to waiting just a little longer than everybody else. When it comes to Java, Mac users are finding that if they want to live on the "bleeding edge" of technology, they must also be prepared to bleed a little more profusely than everybody else.

The tools

Natural Intelligence's Roaster DR2

Released in January of 1996 -- albeit in developer-release form -- Roaster was the very first available tool for Java development on the Mac. This integrated development environment was created explicitly for Java. Although it is intended primarily for applet development, it's possible to use Roaster to create and run Java stand-alone applications as well, with some limitations. The current release, DR2, was originally announced as Final Release 1, but cooler heads prevailed, and Natural Intelligence (NI) decided to call the current release by the more appropriate name of Developer Release 2.

The product comes on CD-ROM and sells for a hefty 99, but if you qualify for an educational discount you can get it for 9. The purchase price includes all developer releases, as well as Release 1 and Release 2, shipped on CD. The basic subscription model is similar to that pioneered by Metrowerks with its CodeWarrior product.

Important! See Update.

Sun Microsystems' JDK 1.0.2 for MacOS

Released in beta form a few weeks after Roaster hit the scene, and on the other end of the price spectrum, is Sun's Java developer's kit (JDK), which is available for download at no charge from the JavaSoft Web site at http://www.javasoft.com/java.sun.com/products/JDK/index.html. Now at version 1.0.2, the kit includes four applications: a Java compiler, an applet viewer, Java Runner (an interpreter for running Java stand-alone applications), and JavaH (a utility for generating header and stub files for native methods written in C).

The JDK is not an integrated development environment, and is not to be confused with SunSoft's Java WorkShop, an IDE currently available in beta only for Windows 95/NT and Unix, but expected to be available for the Mac well before hell freezes over, and perhaps even sometime this year. (Though originally scheduled for release this summer, Java WorkShop for the Mac has been put on the back burner at SunSoft while kinks in the non-Mac versions are ironed out.)

In a sense, I'm comparing apples and oranges by including the JDK in this review, but I think it's important for Mac developers to be aware that they can get started with Java without buying expensive tools, provided they are willing to make some significant sacrifices in terms of convenience.

Symantec's Café DR2 for Macintosh

Symantec's earliest announcements of Java development tools referred to them by the name Espresso, but that name was dropped, perhaps to avoid confusion with a plethora of existing and emerging entities by the same name. Symantec later released Caffeine, a freely downloadable, beta-quality plug-in for its Windows and Macintosh C++ environments, and finally, in late April, announced Café for Macintosh, a stand-alone IDE for creating Java applets and applications. Café for Macintosh was originally announced as Release 1, but by the time it shipped, Symantec had evidently decided to stick with quietly calling it DR1, the DR apparently standing for "developer release."

Café currently ships with a preview version of Café Studio, a tool for visually constructing applet Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs).

Café DR1 shipped on CD-ROM; the latest version (DR2) can be ordered online and downloaded directly from the Internet but is not currently slated for pressing on CD. (Registered owners of DR1 may upgrade to DR2 by downloading it from the Web.) Café carries a price of 9. Those who have been following the IDEs closely may recall that 9 was originally announced as an "introductory" price, with an expected increase to 99 after July 22, 1996. Recently, however, Symantec decided to scrap the price increase and stick with the more competitive 9 price tag for Café.

Registered users of Café get one year of free updates via the Web -- free, that is, if you don't count the download time for the updates, which may be as large as 12 megabytes.

Metrowerks' Discover Programming with Java, CodeWarrior Gold 9

Metrowerks, in late 1995, was among the first to announce plans to release Mac tools for Java; to a degree, Metrowerks set the agenda by announcing that Java support would be included in CodeWarrior 9, so that developers whose existing CodeWarrior subscriptions (from versions 7 or 8) already entitled them to the version 9 update would get the Java tools at no additional charge. I reviewed Metrowerks' Discover Programming with Java, a Java-only version of Metrowerks' CodeWarrior IDE, bundled with an electronic version of Barry Boone's Learn Java on the Macintosh (published by Addison-Wesley, and commissioned by Metrowerks exclusively for inclusion in the Discover Programming package). The book is aimed at those with little or no programming experience who want to get started with Java.