Lava

Lava is a command-line oriented environment for developing Java classes. I named it as a contraction of "Linux-Java" and because it's a four-letter word that sounds neat, but it's really a very simple collection of tools and conventions which have made my Java development work faster and more productive.

Why lava?

Nothing in lava is rocket science. However, many programmers who begin working in Java are in need of some structure for their working environment. I often see compiled classes scattered willy-nilly amongst source code, or source files which aren't stored correctly in a package tree. The basic tools provided by Sun's Java Development Kit (JDK) are just sufficient to build and run code - they provide few amentities to make this task easy.

Basic concepts

Lava provides a straightforward environment for compiling, testing, and building Java source code. It has the following characteristics:

• a source tree containing the .java and class resource files you are working on
• a classes tree containing .class files that have been compiled during the code-and-debug cycle
• a jars directory containing precompiled or third-party .jar files

These resources work together to support the following common activities:

• compiling one or more source files
• running applications off the current compiled classes
• cleaning out stale compiled classes