DrJava

Available for download at http://drjava.org . DrJava is a lightweight programming environment for Java designed to foster test-driven software development. It includes an intelligent program editor, an interactions pane for evaluating program text, a source level debugger, and a unit testing tool. In addition to bug fixes, this stable release includes one important new feature introduced after the last stable release: This release of DrJava should successfully load the Java 8 compiler when DrJava is run using a Java 8 JDK. Notes: (i) Java 5 compatibility has been dropped. To use DrJava, you will need Java 6 or newer. (ii) The Mac OS X app is configured to use Apple Java 6, the last Java release developed by Apple. Subsequent Oracle releases of Java for Mac OS X use a different, incompatible app launcher. DrJava can be run using an Oracle JDK on Mac OS X by downloading the jar file version of DrJava and invoking it from the command line. In some cases, simply clicking on the jar file icon will start DrJava. (iii) Recent versions of Mac OS X include a gatekeeper that declares unlicensed apps (like DrJava and most other open source apps) as "corrupt" and suggests that they be deleted. Many users report that this happens when attempting to open the DrJava app (even though it uses Apple's app launcher) the first time. Nevertheless, the app can be opened manually and will subsequently open normally. (iv) This release of DrJava supports the editing and compilation of Java 8 programs but it does not yet support new Java 8 syntax in the interactions pane. We anticipate that a forthcoming release will have this capability. (v) DrJava currently triggers a JVM bug in the Oracle releases of Java 7 and 8 on Linux. The bug prints a JVM crash message on the console (typically the terminal from which DrJava is started), but DrJava still appears to start normally. Java must restart in most configurations (depending on your saved DrJava preferences) because many critical parameters of the JVM including the classpath, maximum heap size, and maximum stack size must be specified at startup and cannot be changed. The Oracle Java 7/8 JVM does not crash in DrJava until after the restart operation (spawning a new JVM) has been executed, so only the display of the DrJava splash banner fails as a result of the crash.