Fun with Eclipse

[Roedy Green]

my old slickedit has gradually gone south trying to deal with new Java
1p5 syntax, so I decided to bite the bullet and try to do a project in
Eclipse.

The process was remarkably easy.

Eclipse does things for you all the time in the background without
being asked.

Thee formatter is the most configurable I have ever seen but it won't
do the "correct" layout I have using for years.

I is a whole new way of working . Instead of using search replace you
find by navigating a tree or by clicking to find definitions and
references.

Every time you hit save it recompiles.

I love the way it cleans up messy Javadoc, and finds and fixes syntax
errors with just as much anal retentiveness as it handled the code
itself. You can configure everything. It is beautifully done so you
instantly see the effects of what you are asking for on some sample
code.

It is slow to start, but I never had to wait for it once it got going.

The downsides:
it has its own error messages which are petty bad.
Don't try any of the fancy stuff like global rename, method reordering
until you have a clean compile. It can turn your code to much.
Happily the undo works back past your save.

Global rename actually works. It seems so effortless when you use it,
no big deal. You change an enum constant and all code is instantly
converted to it.


The biggest problem I had is it hops all by itself from module to
module and I sometime think I am working on code X when it really
somewhat similar code Y. Further other than by deleting a file, I
could not get it to ignore a file for a while. Not even renaming it to
non-java extensions worked. It still tried to recompile it.

the import filters did not work, but other than that most seems to
work as advertised, even without reading the help.

I miss block cuts with right mouse other than that this thing seems to
do everything but eat.

I am very impressed the way it can navigate imperfect code. I would
prefer something that protected you more from screwing things up. It
can be such a bitch when a stray { turns a class fop top level to
nested or vice versa.


It is fun seeing some of the ideas I promoted about years ago in my
scid essay now realised. See http://mindprod.com/projects.html#SCID


It does not seem to have sensible idea of priority. I will fuss about
JavaDoc before it gets to the serious syntax errors. By default it
should sort with the worst problem on top. Perhaps this is because by
default javadoc testing in turned off.


--
Bush crime family lost/embezzled $3 trillion from Pentagon.
Complicit Bush-friendly media keeps mum. Rumsfeld confesses on video.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/mckinney_grills_rumsfeld.htm

Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
See http://mindprod.com/iraq.html photos of Bush's war crimes

 

[IchBin]

my old slickedit has gradually gone south trying to deal with new Java
1p5 syntax, so I decided to bite the bullet and try to do a project in
Eclipse.

The process was remarkably easy.

Eclipse does things for you all the time in the background without
being asked.

Thee formatter is the most configurable I have ever seen but it won't
do the "correct" layout I have using for years.

I is a whole new way of working . Instead of using search replace you
find by navigating a tree or by clicking to find definitions and
references.

Every time you hit save it recompiles.

I love the way it cleans up messy Javadoc, and finds and fixes syntax
errors with just as much anal retentiveness as it handled the code
itself. You can configure everything. It is beautifully done so you
instantly see the effects of what you are asking for on some sample
code.

It is slow to start, but I never had to wait for it once it got going.

The downsides:
it has its own error messages which are petty bad.
Don't try any of the fancy stuff like global rename, method reordering
until you have a clean compile. It can turn your code to much.
Happily the undo works back past your save.

Global rename actually works. It seems so effortless when you use it,
no big deal. You change an enum constant and all code is instantly
converted to it.


The biggest problem I had is it hops all by itself from module to
module and I sometime think I am working on code X when it really
somewhat similar code Y. Further other than by deleting a file, I
could not get it to ignore a file for a while. Not even renaming it to
non-java extensions worked. It still tried to recompile it.

the import filters did not work, but other than that most seems to
work as advertised, even without reading the help.

I miss block cuts with right mouse other than that this thing seems to
do everything but eat.

I am very impressed the way it can navigate imperfect code. I would
prefer something that protected you more from screwing things up. It
can be such a bitch when a stray { turns a class fop top level to
nested or vice versa.


It is fun seeing some of the ideas I promoted about years ago in my
scid essay now realised. See http://mindprod.com/projects.html#SCID


It does not seem to have sensible idea of priority. I will fuss about
JavaDoc before it gets to the serious syntax errors. By default it
should sort with the worst problem on top. Perhaps this is because by
default javadoc testing in turned off.

Yes, Eclipse is nice. The best part are all of the free plugins that you
can use from the eclipse tools project or the open source projects and
plug-ins at http://www.eclipse.org/community

There is also nice collection of plugins at

http://www.eclipse-plugins.info/eclipse

http://www.eclipseplugincentral.com/

Good information at the Eclipse Wiki at http://eclipsewiki.editme.com

Are you using the latest 3.1 version. I found that this loads much
faster than any of the 3.1 milestones versions.

--


Thanks in Advance...
IchBin, Pocono Lake, Pa, USA
__________________________________________________________________________

' If there is one, Knowledge is the "Fountain of Youth"'
-William E. Taylor, Regular Guy (1952-)

 

[Roedy Green]

I have had some more experience with the beast and I wish I had read
the following few paragraphs before I started. I got is so much
trouble trying to modify Eclipse *.java files behind its back. My
changes kept disappearing.

Eclipse is a true SCID.

You may have no interest in how Eclipse works under the hood, but you
had better understand at least as much as I am about to explain. This
means its stores your Java source code in a structured database. This
is how it can navigate so quickly, do global renames, refactor, find
references and declarations instantly, compile instantly and undo
changes, etc. It does not use Javac.exe at all (except in an ant
build). It tokenises your source as you type and uses its own
incremental/background compiler when you hit save.

Every time you click save at saves a conventional *.java copy of the
class source on disk along with a corresponding compiled *.class file.
However, if you modify one of those files, delete it, rename etc.,
nothing happens. It is as if Eclipse were oblivious to your changes.
The true copy of your program is inside the database. To allow other
programs to change your source code, don't touch Eclipse's *.java
files. They there mainly for curiosity, for backup and for CVS. In the
case the entire Eclipse database were corrupted, you would lose
nothing since your last save, even if you had no backup of the eclipse
database itself.

Instead of meddling with Eclipse's *.java files, export, fix with your
conventional tools and editors and the import the back again.

Import is the trickiest feature of Eclipse. Check after every import
that your new source overrode the old and went into the correct place.
It is so easy to mess up and effectively lose all the work you did
outside Eclipse. If you screw up, you can compare Eclipse files with
your exported ones, correct your copy of the files with Diffzilla, and
reimport them. Again, there is no point in using Diffzilla to directly
fix the Eclipse files.
--
Bush crime family lost/embezzled $3 trillion from Pentagon.
Complicit Bush-friendly media keeps mum. Rumsfeld confesses on video.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/mckinney_grills_rumsfeld.htm

Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
See http://mindprod.com/iraq.html photos of Bush's war crimes

 

[Roedy Green]

Are you using the latest 3.1 version. I found that this loads much
faster than any of the 3.1 milestones versions.

I am using 3.1. I tend to just leave it up. If I want to do
something else, I just leave it running.

I played with TaskManager but it did not seem to want to tell me just
how much real memory that was costing me.

--
Bush crime family lost/embezzled $3 trillion from Pentagon.
Complicit Bush-friendly media keeps mum. Rumsfeld confesses on video.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/mckinney_grills_rumsfeld.htm

Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
See http://mindprod.com/iraq.html photos of Bush's war crimes

 

[Roedy Green]

Are you using the latest 3.1 version. I found that this loads much
faster than any of the 3.1 milestones versions.

After I get more familiar with it, I will try compiling it with Jet to
see how that speeds it up, especially the loads.

--
Bush crime family lost/embezzled $3 trillion from Pentagon.
Complicit Bush-friendly media keeps mum. Rumsfeld confesses on video.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/mckinney_grills_rumsfeld.htm

Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
See http://mindprod.com/iraq.html photos of Bush's war crimes

 

[Chris Smith]

After I get more familiar with it, I will try compiling it with Jet to
see how that speeds it up, especially the loads.

I'm not very familiar with Jet, but the fact that 95% of Eclipse's code
is loaded via not only dynamic loading, but also a very heavily tweaked
custom classloader might frustrate your attempts to get a big
performance boost from static compilers. It's likely that practically
the entire application will be JIT compiled anyway.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Raymond DeCampo]

I am using 3.1. I tend to just leave it up. If I want to do
something else, I just leave it running.

I played with TaskManager but it did not seem to want to tell me just
how much real memory that was costing me.

To get a real feeling for memory using Windows Task Manager, you should
add the "Virtual Memory" column to your view.

Ray

 

[Chris Smith]

To get a real feeling for memory using Windows Task Manager, you should
add the "Virtual Memory" column to your view.

As always when analyzing performance data, interpret the values with
caution.

Since Java is garbage collected and has a somewhat sophisticated
collector, it can depend on the memory pressure of the system. For
example, if Eclipse claims to be using 200MB of memory in task manager,
that may be because the garbage collector hasn't seen a good enough
reason to run collection recently. Modern JVM versions do release
memory to the operating system occasionally, and that number may quickly
shrink when memory is needed.

A more complete process viewer can show you the working set size, which
is generally a better indicator of the total memory "tied up" with that
process.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Roedy Green]

To get a real feeling for memory using Windows Task Manager, you should
add the "Virtual Memory" column to your view.

I did. IT does not seem to fluctuate though if what they meant by that
was real ram used.

--
Bush crime family lost/embezzled $3 trillion from Pentagon.
Complicit Bush-friendly media keeps mum. Rumsfeld confesses on video.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/mckinney_grills_rumsfeld.htm

Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
See http://mindprod.com/iraq.html photos of Bush's war crimes

 

[Roedy Green]

I'm not very familiar with Jet, but the fact that 95% of Eclipse's code
is loaded via not only dynamic loading, but also a very heavily tweaked
custom classloader might frustrate your attempts to get a big
performance boost from static compilers. It's likely that practically
the entire application will be JIT compiled anyway.

That is no problem. If they dynamically loaded files live in the jar,
or you make a list of them, Jet will precompile them to.

I tried this out with my Holidays application that dynamically loads
little classes to describe each possible holiday.

--
Bush crime family lost/embezzled $3 trillion from Pentagon.
Complicit Bush-friendly media keeps mum. Rumsfeld confesses on video.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/us/mckinney_grills_rumsfeld.htm

Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
See http://mindprod.com/iraq.html photos of Bush's war crimes

 

[ldv]

I'm not very familiar with Jet, but the fact that 95% of Eclipse's code
is loaded via not only dynamic loading, but also a very heavily tweaked
custom classloader might frustrate your attempts to get a big
performance boost from static compilers. It's likely that practically
the entire application will be JIT compiled anyway.

This is correct, but with Excelsior JET you can have the JITted classes
cached to disk and then recompile them into one DLL (or shared object
if you are running Linux.) This issue is discussed in details here:

HOWTO: Compile Eclipse Platform with Excelsior JET
http://www.excelsior-usa.com/kb/000010.html

 

[Roland]

I have had some more experience with the beast and I wish I had read
the following few paragraphs before I started. I got is so much
trouble trying to modify Eclipse *.java files behind its back. My
changes kept disappearing. [...]

Every time you click save at saves a conventional *.java copy of the
class source on disk along with a corresponding compiled *.class file.
However, if you modify one of those files, delete it, rename etc.,
nothing happens. It is as if Eclipse were oblivious to your changes.

[...]
You can enable 'Window -> Preferences -> General -> Workspace ->
Refresh automatically'. I've never used it, but from what I understand
from Help, on the Windows platform file changes outside Eclipse will be
detected automatically due to a refresh monitor based on file system
callbacks.

There's also 'Window -> Preferences -> General -> Startup and Shutdown
-> Refresh workspace on startup' and you can refresh a resource (file,
package, directory, project) yourself: using the right-click context
menu, or F5.
--
Regards,

Roland de Ruiter
` ___ ___
`/__/ w_/ /__/
/ \ /_/ / \

 

[Raymond DeCampo]

As always when analyzing performance data, interpret the values with
caution.

Since Java is garbage collected and has a somewhat sophisticated
collector, it can depend on the memory pressure of the system. For
example, if Eclipse claims to be using 200MB of memory in task manager,
that may be because the garbage collector hasn't seen a good enough
reason to run collection recently. Modern JVM versions do release
memory to the operating system occasionally, and that number may quickly
shrink when memory is needed.

I don't see how this makes them different from any other application.
From the OS point of view, the memory is in use, whether the JVM thinks
it can be freed or not. More important, a request for memory from
another process will not trigger garbage collection in the JVM to free
up system resources.

A more complete process viewer can show you the working set size, which
is generally a better indicator of the total memory "tied up" with that
process.

Ray

 

[Chris Smith]

I don't see how this makes them different from any other application.
From the OS point of view, the memory is in use, whether the JVM thinks
it can be freed or not. More important, a request for memory from
another process will not trigger garbage collection in the JVM to free
up system resources.

Yes, it's a bit more complex than I'd originally said, but it does make
a difference. There are actually two ways.

First, IIRC the garbage collector actually does pay attention to memory
pressure in the system when deciding whether to release memory to the
operating system during collection, Don't hold me to that; it's a
distant memory from investigating the workings back when the memory
release was first added several years ago. I don't recall the source.

Second, the operating system has its own ways to deal with a ballooning
process -- by swapping it out -- and the garbage collector *definitely*
pays attention to RAM locality when running, so that it will tend to run
more often and compact heap space more aggressively if the process is
seeing an unusually high number of page faults.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Raymond DeCampo]

Yes, it's a bit more complex than I'd originally said, but it does make
a difference. There are actually two ways.

First, IIRC the garbage collector actually does pay attention to memory
pressure in the system when deciding whether to release memory to the
operating system during collection, Don't hold me to that; it's a
distant memory from investigating the workings back when the memory
release was first added several years ago. I don't recall the source.

Second, the operating system has its own ways to deal with a ballooning
process -- by swapping it out -- and the garbage collector *definitely*
pays attention to RAM locality when running, so that it will tend to run
more often and compact heap space more aggressively if the process is
seeing an unusually high number of page faults.

Swapping a process out is irrelevant here. It does not matter if the
process is in physical memory or not for it to use the OS memory
resources. E.g., the Windows page file is capped at a particular
(configurable) size. So a process eating virtual memory does effect the
entire system.

As to your first comment, without a source or reference it is just
speculation. It may very well be true, but I would like to see
something document before I would repeat it.

Ray

 

[Chris Smith]

Swapping a process out is irrelevant here. It does not matter if the
process is in physical memory or not for it to use the OS memory
resources. E.g., the Windows page file is capped at a particular
(configurable) size. So a process eating virtual memory does effect the
entire system.

Ah, I see where we're disagreeing now.

I'd venture a guess that on general-purpose desktop systems (as opposed
to specialized embedded or dedicated computer systems) there are *far*
more commonly problems with a process's optimal working set not fitting
into RAM (result: lots of disk access and bad performance) than with
running out of page file (result: processes being killed by the OS
and/or actual failures and error messages). In fact, I'd guess that the
vast majority of people have not even seen the latter problem for at
least several years. I wouldn't worry about running out of virtual
memory.

--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.

Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation

 

[Tim Tyler]

On 4-7-2005 3:47, Roedy Green wrote:

I have had some more experience with the beast and I wish I had read
the following few paragraphs before I started. I got is so much
trouble trying to modify Eclipse *.java files behind its back. My
changes kept disappearing. [...]

Every time you click save at saves a conventional *.java copy of the
class source on disk along with a corresponding compiled *.class file.
However, if you modify one of those files, delete it, rename etc.,
nothing happens. It is as if Eclipse were oblivious to your changes.

[...]

You can enable 'Window -> Preferences -> General -> Workspace ->
Refresh automatically'. I've never used it, but from what I understand
from Help, on the Windows platform file changes outside Eclipse will be
detected automatically due to a refresh monitor based on file system
callbacks.

There's also 'Window -> Preferences -> General -> Startup and Shutdown
-> Refresh workspace on startup' and you can refresh a resource (file,
package, directory, project) yourself: using the right-click context
menu, or F5.

Seconded.

If you change a file outside Eclipse, you typically need to "Refresh" it -
or one of its parents - in Eclipse, by chossing the "Refresh" option from
Eclipse's context menu.

Eclipse's default configuration is still a bit puzzling for me -
it ships with many of the syntax colouring categories disabled,
and doesn't use the "Package Explorer" by default - both highly
questionable decisions IMO.

 

[Tim Tyler]

The downsides:
it has its own error messages which are petty bad.

IMO, Eclipse's compiler knocks spots off every other Java compiler
I've ever seen.

One of the the best things is that it *actually* knows which class
files need recompiling to leave your project in a consitent state.

Also it has a number of built-in lint like tools - so even before
you have installed Checkstyle in Eclipse, it produces much more
helpful output than most other IDEs can manage.

Global rename actually works. It seems so effortless when you use it,
no big deal. You change an enum constant and all code is instantly
converted to it.

....and that's just the tip of the huge Eclipse refacoring iceberg:

Highlight a block of code and choose "Refactor->extract method" - and
watch as Eclipse figures out what return type you need, and all the
relevant method parameters and their names - and basically does
everything for you.

....or highlight an expression and turn it into a local variable -
and watch as Eclipse finds all the equivalent occurrences of that
expression in scope and converts them to the new variable automatically.