I’m fairly new to Java development, and people have been suggesting I use Eclipse as an IDE for the work I’m doing. My code lives on a linux box (running Ubuntu of some fairly recent version), but I use a MacBook as my main computer. I’ve been ssh’ing into the linux box to work on the non-Java code, simply using vim and have done the same up to this point with the java code, compiling it from the command line. From what I hear, Eclipse would be fairly useful in managing the project’s code, but from all I’ve found, it seems I need to run it locally with the code; i.e., either with the code on my Mac or Eclipse on the linux box, not with Eclipse on the Mac and the code on the linux box.
Any one else in a similar situation that has a working solution they can explain?
The first thing you should do is set up a revision control system. I recommend SVN. Then install Eclipse on your Mac with the Subclipse plugin so you can check out the code to your local machine and work on it locally. You can deploy the code to your linux box in a number of ways. The simplest might be to simply check out the code from SVN on your Ubuntu box.