Java developers use a wide variety of tools and development environments. Liferay makes every effort to remain tool agnostic, so you can choose the tools that work best for you. For convenience, Liferay IDE includes a bundled Liferay Plugins Software Development Kit (SDK) but you can use the Liferay Plugins SDK all by itself. The Plugins SDK leverages Apache Ant as its build tool and can be used along with any text editor or Integrated Development Environment (IDE).