A common question we get after our webinars or other live coding exercises is, how we make our live coding look so fluent. Why don’t you need to redeploy your war file to show the changes?
It is no stunt or a specially crafted marketing JVM – we're doing the real stuff. The “secret” is JRebel. JRebel is a commonly used tool among Java developer to speed up the development process by greatly improving the standard code “hot swap” features provided default by IDEs.
Our friends at ZeroTurnaround just published a new 6.2 version, with features helping many Vaadin developers, so it is a perfect time to remind you how to become a more productive Java/Vaadin developer: Grab a free trial license and Install JRebel into your favorite IDE. That's it!
Improved GWT Support in JRebel
Many Vaadin users are at least some point involved with client side development with GWT. Typically when you are working with a fine-tuned custom component, you’ll build a custom client side counterpart for your server side API. With JRebel 6.2 you can skip redeploys in your client side code as well. JRebel supports both the traditional development mode and the newer “super-dev-mode” (that uses no browser plugins).
Many Vaadin add-ons depend on some third party JS libraries. In these cases it can be that the major part of your add-on code is about GWT-JS integration, typically written using JSNI. You can now add, remove and change JSNI methods with the same fluency that existing JRebel users have taken as granted with server side Vaadin code.
If you are writing pure client side applications or offline modes for Vaadin TouchKit apps, there are lots of other GWT related enhancements like support for GWT-RPC and AutoBeans. JRebel 6.2 also supports dynamic changes to CssResource interfaces (not just to the css file), that will dramatically speed up theme building for your TouchKit app.
What else is new in 6.2?
JRebel 6.2 not only includes the GWT and Vaadin improvements from above, but also includes better support for all of the flavors of TomEE.