When starting to develop extensions or customizations for Fusion Applications, one of the first decisions is the operating system platform. This short post will offer some guidance.
Fusion Applications itself is certified for several Unix-based operating systems as well as the Windows platform. JDeveloper, too, runs thanks to its Java-based implementation on many operating systems, including some like MacOS that are not supported by Fusion Applications themselves.
So which platform should you choose for your development environment?
The development teams at Oracle for the most part use Oracle Linux as the operating system for their development machines. They run JDeveloper, WLS, and databases on it. It’s very stable and efficient. We in the Developer Relations team tend to use Windows for our work to match what is often the platform of choice for 3rd party developers and consultants for their laptops and desktops.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter which operating system you choose: JDeveloper is platform-independent and in our experience runs equally well on Windows and Unix/Linux. If you install a standalone WebLogic Server on your development machine, you will need to download the version from eDelivery for your development OS, which can be different from the operating system that your test or production servers run on. For instance, you could develop on Windows, have a standalone Windows WebLogic server and ultimately target a Linux or Solaris environment with your customization or extension.
If you have a team of developers, it probably makes sense to standardize on a common platform to ensure any scripts or other tools can be shared and you don’t have to worry about CR/LF issues for text files.
Whether you prefer Windows or Linux, you should use a 64-bit version. The minimum usable memory configuration is 8 GB and a 64-bit JDK is required, so a 32-bit operating system is just not a viable option.