Benefits of switching from Eclipse to IntelliJ IDEA for Android development [closed]
I have been using Eclipse for Android development and don't have a problem with it (I also use it for Web Service and C++ development under Linux) but I want to give IntelliJ IDEA a go as it appears to have favourable reviews. This is easily possibly now that IDEA 10 has been released with Android support enabled in the Community Edition.
I have looked at IDEA and it looks pretty good to me with the only downside being the lack of UI on .xml file editing (AndroidManifest.xml for example) and the user interface builder provided with ADT 9.0.
Has anyone got experience they can share on IntelliJ IDEA and Android development?
EDIT: Thanks all; I'm sticking with Eclipse as I know it pretty well and it allows me to do pretty much anything (Java-related) I like for free. I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth!
The only benefit for me: You code as fast as formula 1 :). Really. If you're used to Resharper in .NET programming, then you will code as fast as in .NET. Even faster.
Bad thing: lack of some Eclipse's tools (browse my questions for details) and it seems that Eclipse's compiler--which you can use from IntelliJ as well--is better. Because of the lack of some tools you are forced to use many 3rd party tools.
The bottom line is: if you don't have problems with Eclipse, then stick to it. I hated Eclipse's slowness and that's why I moved to IntelliJ.
EDIT 23 Jan 2013
IntelliJ has improved a lot. They now have UI visual editor, a great connection to Android SDK and at this moment I can't really think of any feature which Eclipse has and IDEA does not have. What's better, I will say again that IDEA has more features than Eclipse.
EDIT 11 Mar 2014
Again IntelliJ improved. With its visual UI editor for XML layouts and itself being used as the base for Google's Android Studio, its still the best IDE around.
The only flaws for Android developer are IMHO:
it still does not perfectly import dependencies (libraries) so you have to fix things manually
it does not perfectly recognizes other projects (modules) which sometimes you have to add those modules manually
a support for Google Glass does not exist
All this is referring to when importing projects made in Eclipse, which happens very often to anyone working on multiple Android projects.
I have used both, they aren't that different. A lot of it is just what you are used to. Personally, if you aren't having any problems with Eclipse, I would not suggest switching. There are no advantages that are worth the learning curve.
I switched to IDEA for my android development.
- Intellisense actually works
- IDEA is much faster
- The refactoring is nicely done, and the "inspections" catch a lot of places where refactoring would make sense
Things I miss:
- The new Layout viewer from Android 3.0. I always modify the layout xml, but it's nice to be able to switch over and get an idea of what it will look like without running the app. I do load up eclipse for this reason when I do heavy layout editing.
- Hover documentation. In intelliJ, you have to press ctrl+Q to get the javaDoc of an existing method call (vs intellisense popping up as you code).