Developers: "Simplify Eclipse or else..."

[thufir]

Sun is also offering bounties up of to $500 for exceptional blogs about
new NetBeans features. Now that's what I call putting your money where
your mouth is.

ROFL -- I like they way that's totally up-front astro-turfing


-Thufir

 

[Lionel van den Berg]

There are a lot of companies where it is expected that source control
contains a project file for the IDE that is mandated within the company.

Project file can still be an ant script. Netbeans allows new project from
existing ant script, as does Eclipse.

I prefer Netbeans by a long shot, but there are some nice things in
Eclipse.

 

[Lionel van den Berg]

Early calls to simplify Eclipse
By Phil Manchester
Do it or lose it to NetBeans

"Improved usability and integration with other integrated development
environments are the first features being called for in response to a
request for feedback on the future Eclipse."

[...]

http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2008/03/31/eclpse_e4_feature_requests/

You can be sure that Eclipse will live fine for many years no matter
what they do for 4.x.

But Eclipse + available plugins has almost exploded in size. They do
have good reason to try and see if they structure things better to make
it easier to use also for those that are not full time Java IDE users.

One of my dislikes of Eclipse is the fact that all plugins and projects
that shouldn't be tightly bound to the IDE are in fact tightly bound to
the IDE. EMF for example, I had to pull out at least 5 jars, hunting
through to find them to satisfy dependencies and correctly set up my and
scripts. The loading of a rational rose model was too difficult for me to
try to figure out how to automate in an ant script, so now I resort to
opening eclipse just to reload a model and generate code . . . argh.

It does do very well on managing source and recognising JUnit tests etc.
But then if you need to rely on that it means your ant script is broken.

Lionel.

 

[Mark Space]

ROFL -- I like they way that's totally up-front astro-turfing

Well, yeah that part is. But you have to appreciate that Sun is trying,
by hook or by crook, apparently.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

One of my dislikes of Eclipse is the fact that all plugins and projects
that shouldn't be tightly bound to the IDE are in fact tightly bound to
the IDE.

Eclipse plugins are obviously bound to Eclipse.

EMF for example, I had to pull out at least 5 jars, hunting
through to find them to satisfy dependencies and correctly set up my and
scripts.

In newer Eclipse's you just click the "Select required" button.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Project file can still be an ant script. Netbeans allows new project from
existing ant script, as does Eclipse.

Yes.

But does the generated project file work as well as a manually
created one ?

My experience (not with latest versions) say no.

Arne

 

[Lionel van den Berg]

Yes.

But does the generated project file work as well as a manually created
one ?

Not quite, but the missing features are not important with a well written
ant script.

 

[Lionel van den Berg]

In newer Eclipse's you just click the "Select required" button.

What exactly does that do?

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

What exactly does that do?

It select all the required dependencies.

Arne

 

[Hendrik Maryns]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Arne Vajhøj schreef:
| Lionel van den Berg wrote:
|> On Sat, 03 May 2008 23:36:21 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
|>>> EMF for example, I had to pull out at least 5 jars, hunting
|>>> through to find them to satisfy dependencies and correctly set up my
|>>> and scripts.
|>> In newer Eclipse's you just click the "Select required" button.
|>
|> What exactly does that do?
|
| It select all the required dependencies.

If they are available. Sometimes you have to retry with more update
sources selected.

H.
- --
Hendrik Maryns
http://tcl.sfs.uni-tuebingen.de/~hendrik/
==================
http://aouw.org
Ask smart questions, get good answers:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
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[Lionel van den Berg]

Eclipse plugins are obviously bound to Eclipse.

At least for EMF it shouldn't have been an eclipse plugin in the first
place. The guys who wrote it should have made it generic in the first
place, then added support in eclipse if they so desired. It is only
partly like this, after all I was able to gather the jars and allow
compilation without any IDE installed.

Such an approach would be beneficial to the project anyway as it would
attract more widespread adoption of the tool and perhaps greater input.

Its fair that people have their preferences on what IDE to use, or to not
use an IDE at all. A disturbing trend that I seem to be seeing is that
Eclipse users believe that Eclipse is the only tool you should use and
every application should be an an eclipse plugin, packaged and
distributed that way. It seems insane to me and an overkill in so many
applications.

Lionel.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Not quite, but the missing features are not important with a well written
ant script.

Many things work well if they are "well written".

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Arne Vajhøj schreef:
| Lionel van den Berg wrote:
|> On Sat, 03 May 2008 23:36:21 -0400, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
|>>> EMF for example, I had to pull out at least 5 jars, hunting
|>>> through to find them to satisfy dependencies and correctly set up my
|>>> and scripts.
|>> In newer Eclipse's you just click the "Select required" button.
|>
|> What exactly does that do?
|
| It select all the required dependencies.

If they are available. Sometimes you have to retry with more update
sources selected.

I have never had to retry.

But obviously Eclipse needs to have the source for what
it needs to get.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

At least for EMF it shouldn't have been an eclipse plugin in the first
place. The guys who wrote it should have made it generic in the first
place, then added support in eclipse if they so desired. It is only
partly like this, after all I was able to gather the jars and allow
compilation without any IDE installed.

Such an approach would be beneficial to the project anyway as it would
attract more widespread adoption of the tool and perhaps greater input.

Its fair that people have their preferences on what IDE to use, or to not
use an IDE at all. A disturbing trend that I seem to be seeing is that
Eclipse users believe that Eclipse is the only tool you should use and
every application should be an an eclipse plugin, packaged and
distributed that way. It seems insane to me and an overkill in so many
applications.

Some Eclipse developers see Eclipse not as an IDE but as a
platform.

I do agree with you that the bigger plugins should
be made as generic software with an Eclipse front (and a NetBeans
front and a Foobar front).

Arne