REVERT TO CONSOLE

Eclipse Ganymede (3.4) was released yesterday and I had a first look at it by configuring both the versions — jee & java. Here are my first impressions and review after migrating my 3.3 workspace of projects into the new one: -

1. Reduced memory foot print? No.
2. Reduced distribution size? No.
   Java distro is 123MB and JEE with over 500 plugins is > 400 MB
3. Loads faster in memory? No.
   With a 3GB Ram, Intel core 2 duo 3.4 Ghz on a Macbook Pro, there isn’t a noticeable difference in performance. Strangely, it feels like the same product 4 years back, inspite of the computer configurations being quadrapled in this time-period.
4. Plugin manager seems improved with a Software Update option. (mimics IntelliJ Idea) but is not really that user friendly. For instance, download the jee distribution and there were a host of plugins that are not necessarily useful for all. The problem is, you cannot uninstall these, the button itself is disabled.
5. I don’t understand Plugin management. Let’s say, you need a rich facelets editor with live view. This is what you need to do for a standalone Java distro now. Download the entire JBoss Tools plgins (70MB). Download Web Developer plugins (~100MB) and then a EMF plugin (def > 50MB). Congratulations, the plugin works now with a “little” dependency on other plugins (~200MB).Try downloading java distro and add a Web Development Tools bundle, it comes with 15 plugins bundles and you have to download all of them. The best part is webtools doesn’t come with a single adapter by default. After downloading 100MB, it’s desirable to have atleast a tomcat plugin. But for that you have to download another 70 MB of Jee plugins. In web tools mode, downloading server adapters fails midway.It’s good to reusue java component libraries but to have a dependency that cannot work without loading an entire plugin suite — I don’t understand this architecture.
6. Why can’t we update eclipse from within eclipse? Do we need to completely erase existing one and reinstall a new one and then move all our workspaces, projects and test for the rest of the day? Talk about modular development.
7. Sometimes if one plugin breaks, it breaks the rest. For instance, code completion doesn’t work. Automatic imports fail because of a faulty plugin. Try this — with jboss tools plugin in the jee distribution, setup a hibernate project and open hibernate perspective. It crashes eclipse. Configur a JBoss Seam project, the server view crashes. Could not create the view: org/eclipse/wst/server/ui/internal/view/servers/ServerAction
8. The Data Tools Platform plugins is a joke. Does anyone use it in real world, compared to a quality standalone DB Query Tool (many available for free)? And now eclipse jee distribution forces us to use it in a jee distro. One cant even configure a url using service name (forces SID name).
9. There are several other redundant features like “Create a new Servlet” button.
10. Why aren’t SVN & Maven out of the box features and a first class citizens of eclipse? (after 4 yrs of releases.) There are third party distributions but they don’t work as desired. For instance I get this error when trying to connect to the new SVN plugin (not subclipse) SVN: ’0×00400006: Validate Repository Location’ operation finished with error: Selected SVN connector library is not available or cannot be loaded.
    If you selected native JavaHL connector, please check if binaries are available or install and select pure Java Subversion connector from the plug-in connectors update site.
    If connectors already installed then you can change the selected one at: Window->Preferences->Team->SVN->SVN Client.
    Selected SVN connector library is not available or cannot be loaded.
    If you selected native JavaHL connector, please check if binaries are available or install and select pure Java Subversion connector from the plug-in connectors update site.
    If connectors already installed then you can change the selected one at: Window->Preferences->Team->SVN->SVN Client.

11. Can’t connect to the Internet even after proxy settings. Is it really difficult to import proxy settings from system browser by default? I can’t get Help to work within the IDE. It keeps throwing — “There is no internet connection”, which can’t be true as the plugins were download via the same proxy setting.
12. It would be much more helpful to read Tips and Tricks & understand New features as compared to reading page no 134 in section 4.3 in a help document online.
13. Mylyn is a revolutionary way to manage tasks form within an IDE but lets face the reality — I haven’t seen or met one team or any of my past projects who actually use this. Every company (small or big) usually has it’s own S/W development model. This again is an example of why eclipse tries to force you to use some features which it “thinks” is standard. I don’t want Mylyn for now, but I cannot get rid of it either in 3.4. (3.3, I could atleast uninstall after a horrifying manual cascade delete of all the other dependencies).
14. Why is Plugin Dev Environment included by default?
15. With web development plugins, add JSF capabilities and try to remove. It doesnt remove.
16. JPA plugin doesn’t work. It completely messes up and throws compilation errors instead. Doesn’t identify theid generators (compiles fine on cmd line) Duplicate generator named “id-generator” defined in this persistence unit Comment.java
    xxx-ejbs/src/main/java/xxx/entity line 16 JPA Problem Marker.
    Even after getting it work, it seems pretty useless. Do we really need a plugin to add a “@NamedQuery” graphically?My worry is that some of the plugins promote the developer to becoming dumb rather than being productive or make them a better programmer
    
17. Tried to update WST tools plugin on eclipse java version. It hangs at 56%. Same with JEE tools plugin. It works after closing and reopening eclipse.
18. The Workspace setup is still painful sometimes, cannot nest folders. Why can’t it be intelligent enough to ignore it?
19. Got a bunch of random errors on using throughout the day: - java.util.concurrentModification on closing/opening a proj Ok, The good things:

1. breadcrumb navigator in the editor. This is the best feature introduced in 3.4. Simple yet powerful. Combining this with Alt+Shft+R or Alt+Shft+T, you would never need a package explorer view.
2. Fine grained formatting for annotations. Overall minor improvements for formatting are great!
3. Some new refactoring tools like “Extract class refactoring”, “quick assists” are cool.
4. I haven’t tried but Real Time shared editing is amazing.
5. Dynamic Language Toolkit is a nice extension
6. P2 Provising, the newly designed Runtime etc are cutting edge features but as a web developer — I doubt if it adds to the developer productivity

What I really want from eclipse …

Ideally this is what I would want from eclipse (which is not too much to ask considering it’s there already)

• Download a bare bones eclipse IDE with a distro size of < 50 MB. It should have *all* the java editor capabilities – refactoring + formatting + intelligent editing, code completion
• all the current java/server debugging facilities
• Just 2 Standard server adapters shipped by default — Tomcat/Jetty. And an easy extension plugin to other servers (JBoss, glassfish etc .. )
• a good XML/XSD plugin (able to edit and code complete)
• a good jsp,jsf,facelets,Xhtml plugin (with a possibility of live view)
• Ant, Maven — out of the box
• junit, testng out of the box
• cvs, svn and the existing Team Synchronizing out of the box
• Simplified workspace, project management. (try to run a helloworld in eclipse, it takes more steps than your vi editor)
• Of course, it should be a *Fast IDE”

For everything else, keep it as simple non-dependable plugins. You want Grails? Fine, add grails plugin.

No — don’t ask me to go buy myeclipse. It comes with *all the frameworks support in the world* and I don’t want them. Do you want to goto a buffet everyday? Or do you prefer a-la-carte?

I do respect Open Source and the Eclipse IDE foundaton, I’ve been using it for over 5 yrs now but I’m beginning to worry about it’s future inspite of it being free, as it seems to be going down the path of what Microsoft did with Vista — giving us features which we don’t need and assume a lot of things about developers, trying to satisfy *every kind of developer* on the planet; like using Microsoft Office 2008 when all you need for is a simple rich document with tables and formatting.

Simplicity is dying.

Lets go back to the 90s and early 2000s’, we all loved Winamp. It was simple, light weight and did the job. Open a file from your hard disk and play. Add dsp plugins or skins. Great! Now, that is simplicity. And then came these monsters — ITunes, Windows Media Player, Real Payer and took over the industry. Sadly Winamp died. The same, I’m afraid is happening with eclipse. With bloated Enterprise features (which don’t really add much to the productivity in my opinion), trying to compete with every vendor out there, adding features like reporting tools (BIRT?), it’s becoming insane everyday.

The idea of just working on a simple web application environment with a feature rich editor is dead now. I have to work with a 400MB monster to write a web app, which takes up 150MB of heap space average and lets accept it — it’s *slow*, makes me wonder what is my “Core 2 Duo processor with 256MB Graphics card” really adding value.

I want my old eclipse. Where is my a-la-carte?