I am using Ganymede (Eclipse 3.4) to do some Java EE based web development targeting a JBoss 4.2 application server.
I have always liked Eclipse very much for a Java editor. The thing is, for Java EE is not as useful as one might think. It's buggy, deployment and debugging is very slow, and you have to re-deploy your Java EE application every time you make a little change. That makes development unbearable.
My question is: Is there a plugin that will make my life easier by adding HOT DEPLOY to Ganymede when developing JBoss Applications?
Yes, you can use JBoss tools:
I've used this when developing on JBoss using Eclipse 3.4, it works well although there are still some bugs in the plugin. Overall though it's better.
Update site for 3.4.2 is:
http://download.jboss.org/jbosstools/updates/stable/
EDIT: Also, if you're running on Redhat you can download JBoss Developer Studio which is "guaranteed" to provide a development environment that is stable and deployable. I've not used it, but interested to see whether it lives up to those claims: