Could “attach source” be made easier for popular Java libraries?

Question

I run into this obstacle when my debugger steps into some classfile without corresponding source. Finding it is often difficult:

• You have to search for the sit

Answer 1

Both m2eclipse and IDEA will download the sources and javadocs for any dependencies. The m2eclipse sources can be downloaded by right-clicking on a dependency (or the whole project if you want all sources) and clicking Maven->Download Sources.

On newer versions of m2eclipse you can also automatically download sources by going to Window->Preferences...->Maven, then selecting the "Download Artifact Sources" option. When you open a type in a dependency jar that there are currently no sources available for, Maven will download the sources in the background and update the source attachment in the background.