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Comment by przmk | Hacker News Reader

Looks very nice. One thing that always prevents me from using anything other than a full-blown IDE for Java is the fact that most entreprise projects use Maven and structure packages with the default Java way by using the FQDN structure (e.g.: org/example/groupid/packageid/submodule/File.java).

Maybe I'm missing something but navigating and finding/adding files in a structure that's 10-20 directories deep or more seems like a nightmare in pure Vim.

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A good fuzzy finder helps a lot with this. You can type something like `ccufFoo` to match `com.company.util.factories.FooWidgetFactory`. I use fzf.vim for this.

Thankfully my company has its own hosted LSP that supports Java (and every other language in our bazel monorepo) so I don’t have to mess around with Eclipse and JDTLS (what happened to eclim?). But at a prior company I just worked without an LSP and just did a lot of referencing Java docs in a browser and split screen files.

another solution for fuzzy finding is telescope.nvim https://github.com/nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim

the thing i like the most about it is the amount of plugins you can add (including things like looking at nvim's paste ring).

I believe that the Neovim Kickstart project gives you Telescope as the fuzzy finder. (The YouTube video by TJ is linked in the README.)

https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim

> what happened to eclim

I was also curious. The project has been shut down/archived this August recommending java LSP instead but it seems like there hasn't been a lot of work or a release since 2021

https://github.com/ervandew/eclim

> (Aug. 03, 2024)

> Eclim has reached its end of life. The Language Server Protocol (LSP) and the various implementations are mature enough that eclim has become unnecessary.

> It has been a great run (nearly 20yrs!) and I'm grateful for everyone that helped out, from bug reports to patches, it's been awesome

I can recommend the yazi CLI tool for filesystem traversal:

https://yazi-rs.github.io

It has support for fzf and zoxide for these uses. As well as a panoply of other goodies (ripgrep, file previews, commands without exiting the file explorer, etc.)

If one is willing to learn helix instead of nvim, I know there's integrations out there between the two as well. I wouldn't be surprised if there were for nvim as well.

There’s a yazi nvim plugin too!

Been using yazi for the terminal but not as a plugin yet. Perhaps I should give it a try. I’ve been happy with oil.nvim too

I started down that route and decided it was just a lot of work ie mental effort I didn’t want to do. My motivation was eclipse maven plug-in was buggy and sucked at the time. I found (like most) IntelliJ gave a much more pleasant experience. How long have you been doing it and how have you managed to stick with it?

I wrote Java sans LSP for three years full time (2012-2015), and then occasionally since then.

Since 2015, I mostly worked on the web version of our cross platform C++ project but have contributed substantially to the Android and iOS libraries as well.

What’s the LSP tool that integrates with Bazel?

Is it open source?

It looks like they work at Google, based on their GitHub (assuming the same username) -- so no, it's sadly not open source :(

A real shame, I think Bazel's lack of good IDE options definitely hampers its adoption.

I always found the existing bazel integrations annoying. My solution has been to generate .classpath based on a set of bazel queries. Not what's officially recommended, but it has worked great for the projects I've been involved in. Easy to understand, and keeps bazel completely separate and independent from the IDE experience which has some benefits.

No, it’s not open source alas.

FWIW, that is not a Maven-ism that is actually inherent to Java (the language and the runtime)[1]. Including case-sensitivity for the filename, which was an especially bold choice for Sun to make back in 1990, although I guess they're all "we'll sell more Solaris workstations!!1" or something

For example:

    $ mkdir foo
    $ cd foo
    $ printf 'package jimbo;\npublic class Foo2 {}\n' > fred.java
    $ javac -g -d . fred.java
    fred.java:2: error: class Foo2 is public, should be declared in a file named Foo2.java
    public class Foo2 {}
           ^
    1 error

The only exception that I'm aware of is that inner classes don't have to live in their own filename (given that they're more or less property of the owning class)

The Maven-ism that I'm aware of is the by default structure of {src/main/java, src/main/resources, src/test/java, src/test/resources} but (of course) those are customizable via the pom.xml if it jams up your project that much

1: https://docs.oracle.com/javase/specs/jls/se6/html/packages.h... (it's the oldest spec version they still link)

Package hierarchies are used during class loading from a directory, but there is nothing in the spec that mandates that kind of directory structure for the source code. Your link only uses the word "might", not "must".

> The only exception that I'm aware of is that inner classes don't have to live in their own filename

Not only inner classes, you can have many top-level classes on the same file but they cannot be public.

Not at all -- if you're something like LazyVim with the stock config, then in a large project it's just <leader>ff to search by filename or <leader>sg to grep across the project (using ripgrep!) or for a symbol search <leader>sS (using symbols provided by the LSP).

I haven't found anything better than Neovim+Lazyvim and switched from ST4 a couple of years ago and never looked back.

<leader><leader> also opens the fuzzy finder in LazyVim. I don’t like it quite as much as <shift><shift> which is the shortcut in Jetbrains but it’s better than <Cmd>-P in VS Code

Yes that works too! I use <leader>fb to fuzzy search over open buffers so <leader>ff is a bit more natural, albeit longer than <leader><leader>.

I think my favorite feature is `gr` (in command mode) to "goto references" for the symbol under the cursor. I use this all the time (as well as `gd` for goto definition which with the LSP is really precise).

Similarly, I found the kickstart.nvim immensely helpful as a jumping off point.

https://github.com/nvim-lua/kickstart.nvim

you want the ctrl+p plugin

It's a fuzzy file finder.

For your example of `org/example/groupid/packageid/submodule/File.java` I might write "[Ctrl+P] pamodFi[Enter]"

If `File.java` is unique enough, I can just type that and it finds it without issue.

There's also filetree plugins if you really want the visual clutter

This is even how I navigate files in IntelliJ.

In IntelliJ, you don't normally need to look for files unless they're non-source code, as you can just go directly to types regardless of their file names.

Yeah it’s the general same concept though. Ctrl + P and type or shift + shift and type the thing you want.

On Mac, it's Cmd+o for types, Cmd+shift+o for actual file names.

Wouldn't that mostly matter if you're really navigating in your source code via the tree panel? In the post-Textmate days, fuzzy file finders seem to be all the rage whether you're using vim or IDEs (or Sublime etc.). Or you go to definition/references immediately.

I mostly use the file navigation when exploring the structure, which I'm not doing that often.

And which I probably should do with a class browser anyways, which I used to do often in Eclipse, way back in time, but it seems that particular SmallTalk-ism isn't very popular in contemporary IDEs.

Doing any work in a project worked on by multiple teams without C-P-style fuzzy file name matching is a recipe for frustration in any editor or IDE, regardless of the language. I've relied on this feature a lot when working in nvim+Python and nowadays in my vscode+typescript job it is one of my most heavily used shortcuts, too.

Try filepicker.vim [0] to navigate these in one of the many popular millers like lf, yazi, ranger or nnn

[0] https://github.com/Konfekt/filepicker.vim

Honestly having one single dedicated F key for jumping anywhere to a class or method definition is, for me, a killer feature that most alternatives lack. I do a lot of kinds of development with Vim, but for certain languages I find it a far better experience to use a language specific IDE.

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