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Eclipse in Action

Posted by timothy on from the bring-welder's-goggles dept.

Simon P. Chappell writes "The Eclipse IDE has thundered into the collective consciousness of Java developers since its release by IBM as Open Source Software. Up until this time, the majority of available documentation at the Eclipse website has been for plug-in developers, with scant attention given to the rest of us that actually want to use the tool for anything else. This book restores the balance and brings much needed help to those interested in this IDE." Read on for the rest of Simon's review, about which he says "Full Disclosure: I received a free, review copy of this book, so feel free to assume that I've been bought off and have traded my technical integrity to put about an inch of dead tree on my shelf." Eclipse in Action author Gallardo, Burnette and McGovern pages 383 (15 page index) publisher Manning rating 8 reviewer Simon P. Chappell ISBN 1930110960 summary A good book that lives up to its name.

Overview With a book like this it's difficult to know where to pitch the level. Do you aim for the lowest common denominator or do you assume some experience on the part of your reader? This book seems to have pitched itself well, not pandering to the absolute Java newbie, not afraid to get down into the code and yet gentle enough that newer Java developers can follow easily. The heavyweight chapter on writing plug-ins is at the back where it shouldn't frighten those of a sensitive nature.

The book is divided into two sections. The first and largest section concerns actual use of Eclipse during Java application development. The second section is for those who wish to write plug-ins for Eclipse.

The book takes a very 'Test Driven Development' approach to Java development and this shows in the manner that Eclipse is presented and taught. Emphasis is given to the tools that come with Eclipse, especially Ant, Junit and the CVS client. For those already skilled in these tools, this might seem like filler, but remember that there are still pitifully few Java developers using even these simple and free tools. My hat is off to the authors for their TDD evangelism, skillfully disguised as Eclipse usage instruction.

What's To Like I liked the progression followed in the book, first teaching the basic operation of Eclipse and then moving on to the tools that come with the base install. What's To Consider Some may consider that the material on Ant, Junit and CVS is filler. The 'Test Driven Development' theme may be a little too much evangelism for some.

I use Eclipse on a Mac OS X box and I felt that there was very little discussion concerning the cross-platform attributes of the tool. All of the screenshots were from a Microsoft Windows build of the software; a Linux or OS X screenshot would have been helpful.

One more niggle and then I'm done. There is no information on using Eclipse with other programming languages (a couple of paragraphs in the introduction chapter doesn't really count). I've recently started tinkering with Ruby and have used a Ruby plug-in to allow me to work within Eclipse as I learn the language. This is a wonderful testament to the power and extensibility of Eclipse.

Summary This is a good book. You know it's a good book when you already use the tool (both pure Eclipse and IBM's WSAD) regularly and you find yourself learning things that you had not previously been aware of. If you are working with Java and want a good free IDE that's going to grow with you, then Eclipse is a tool you should try -- and consider this book the User's Guide that would have been in the box if Eclipse came shrink-wrapped.

Table Of Contents
  1. Using Eclipse
    1. Overview
    2. Getting started with the Eclipse Workbench
    3. The Java development cycle: test, code, repeat
    4. Working with source code in eclipse
    5. Building with Ant
    6. Source control with CVS
    7. Web development tools
  3. Extending Eclipse
    1. Introduction to Eclipse plug-ins
    2. Working with plug-ins in Eclipse

You can purchase Eclipse in Action from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

55 of 247 comments (clear)

  1. best ide ? by ramzak2k · · Score: 4, Informative

    Eclipse is easily the best IDE i have ever used - especially for java compared to other bloatwares for development like
    JBuilder/Netbeans/ Visual Age for Java. IMO, it is also the most easiest one to get familiar with. I have used IBM tools like Visual Age For java & Visual Age for CPP and boy, where they a pain to get started on.

    This page has all the shortcuts in the IDE- valuable time savers :)

    --

    Siggy Say, Siggy Do
    1. Re:best ide ? by Randolpho · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I agree.... Eclipse is the best IDE, hands down. It lacks a few key features, however:

      1) No drag/drop editing. This really is a must, and I can't think of why they haven't bothered with it.

      2) No visual GUI editor. This is available for a price, though. I just wish it were free. :(

      --
      "Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
      -Marilyn Manson
    2. Re:best ide ? by mark_lybarger · · Score: 3, Interesting

      dnd editing? i find myself finding every way possible to stay away from that mouse. you can copy and paste methods, classes using eclipse, but yes, dnd i haven't really found (or looked for).

      if you need a gui editor, then use netbeans. it has an excellent gui editor and is free. if eclipse is the hammer, then gui editing is not a nail...

    3. Re:best ide ? by pacman+on+prozac · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think you could be right, since I use it for completely different thing and am hooked.

      Everyday for the last 6 months I am on eclipse + one of the few PHP plugins along with the ftp plugin from eclipse.org for developing websites. Theres even a few SQL plugins if you're that way inclined (plug a shedload more). Lots of time saved and I can share projects between my work winxp system and linux at home since both run eclipse.

      The only things that can match all these features (last time I looked anyway) cost at least a few hundred dollars, and didn't impress me as much as eclipse did.

      It also runs very fast for me, completely useable on my old 400mhz system.

      Randolpho, theres a few drag/drop plugins on that 2y.net site, might do what you want.

    4. Re:best ide ? by profet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Personally I like IntelliJ IDEA.

      It's not free...but I don't think I could go back to Eclipse.

      IDEA definatlly is the best Java IDE out there.

    5. Re:best ide ? by fruity_pebbles · · Score: 2, Interesting
      The best Java IDE is IntelliJ IDEA, but it's not free.

      Having said that, Eclipse is pretty good, and much more pleasant to use than NetBeans.

    6. Re:best ide ? by s88 · · Score: 5, Informative

      1) Yes there is (if i understand what you mean).

      Expand a java element in the Package Explorer View. Drag and drop it to where you want (eg another class). Eclipse does all the needed refactoring for you.

      2) No visual GUI editor. This is available for a price, though. I just wish it were free. :(

      I'll agree this is lacking, but take a look at some of the plugins:
      Eclipse GUI plugins
      And specifically: Assisi

      Scott

    7. Re:best ide ? by los+furtive · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Hear! Hear!

      --

      I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.

    8. Re:best ide ? by thrice · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm definitely on board w/ this. I was an active user of Eclipse for about 8 months, and after trying out IDEA i switched and left Eclipse behind. Soon afterwards, my entire company followed and we all now use IDEA.

      One of my biggest complaints with Eclipse was the inability to open a file or compile to a directory outside of the project workspace. Additionally, i found the refactoring to be slow when compared to IDEA.

    9. Re:best ide ? by SpryGuy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I completely agree.

      Since I first used IntelliJ IDEA, I cannot go back to any other editor. And with each version, it keeps getting better and better. (I'm on the Early Access Program for the next version... just wait to you see what it has in store! Wow!)

      --

      - Spryguy
      There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
    10. Re:best ide ? by msoori · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Eclipse maybe good enough for a free IDE, but it didnt pass my standards of excellence to make me a convert!!! Eclipse is one of the worst IDEs I've used. I had been using CodeWarrior for ages and was looking for a cheap alternative because I didnt want to pay $400 for CodeWarrior, so kept on trying every IDE I could find, free and otherwise. Today, I still use CodeWarrior, despite its cost because it offers superior navigation capabilities than anything else around. And its a very well thought out UI that is not clumsy like most others. I can concentrate on the problem at hand instead worrying about file management. Its money well spent.

  2. The website by bigjnsa500 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    is already /.'ed... wonderful.... Mirror anybody?

    --
    This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
  3. Are they reinventing the wheel ? by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the Eclipse page :

    Welcome to eclipse.org
    Eclipse is a kind of universal tool platform - an open extensible IDE for anything and nothing in particular.

    It's an EMACS clone then ?

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:Are they reinventing the wheel ? by ebuck · · Score: 4, Funny

      As I don my flame-proof suit.

      "No, it's an extension of vi!"

      WARNING: The above message was intended to be humorous, the humor impaired should press the little X button in the top right hand corner to prevent confusion.

    2. Re:Are they reinventing the wheel ? by mcc · · Score: 2, Funny

      Just remember:

      "The greatest thing about vi is that you can find some version of it that runs on literally any OS that you can think of. Any OS, including EMACS."

      --
      Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
    3. Re:Are they reinventing the wheel ? by Trigun · · Score: 2, Funny

      Now that it's a flamewar...

      Not to mention the OS X users
      Yeah, both of them

      Bye bye Karma.

    4. Re:Are they reinventing the wheel ? by Jack+Greenbaum · · Score: 5, Informative
      I try not to reply to trolls, but I've got to spread some good news for my fellow EMACS brethren who have been been looking for a modern development environment that has few compromises coming from EMACS. I can say that Eclipse is the first IDE with EMACS bindings that I've felt comfortable with. The EMACS key bindings actually work, and work well. For example you can set the mark then move the point. Compare this to other commercial IDEs that consider substituting cntl-w for cntl-x as "EMACS mode", even though you still must select the text with the mouse.

      But wait, there's more! With eclipse the EMACS work style that I use is even better than in EMACS because dabrevs (alt-/) work much better. In eclipse dabrevs are not just a textual expansion as in EMACS, rather it is context sensitive based on the jars you have in your class path as it should be in an Jave IDE. Say what you want about Visual Basic, but M$FT got this right a long time ago.

      Of course we had all of this in ZMACS on the Symbolics back in the 80's, but what goes around comes around ...

      -- Jack

    5. Re:Are they reinventing the wheel ? by captredballs · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, but it still isn't emacs.

      There is a combination of an eclipse plugin and an emacs mode that allows you so used emacs as an external editor. It isn't perfect, particularly in that it crashes emacs sometimes, but it really improves my dev env, since I can use the editor I'm most comfortable in while still being able to take advantage of eclipse.

      jde-eclipse/RemoteEclipse

      --

      I suppose I'm not too threatening, presently, but wait till I start Nautilus
  4. Just remember by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Even during an Eclipse, it's still unsafe to look at Sun.

  5. Re:What's The Point? by easter1916 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Use Eclipse and I am sure you will understand why.

  6. get down to the nitty gritty. by mark_lybarger · · Score: 5, Informative

    i've got this book as well as the slightly outdated netbeans book from oreilly. the netbeans book is miles better than the eclipse book. the eclipse book definately reads like an ibm type book. there are not enough pictures and walk throughs as there are explaining every single widget/button/option in extreme wordy detail.

    the netbeans was an overall easy read and got the user quickly familiar with the parts of the ide they needed to use.

    i'm a heavy eclipse user during my day job mainly b/c i think it's slightly nicer on win32, and i like the debugger more than netbeans. eclipse also seems to require slightly memory footprint and since i haven't yet convinced my manager that having more than 384MB of memory for a java development ide and running a local wl server is absolutely necessarry for maintaining some level of sanity, i'm using what works best for me. at home on a linux platform, i prefer netbeans just because it looks and feels nicer. the gtk+ on linux isn't as nice as the native java look and feel. just my personal preferance.

    1. Re:get down to the nitty gritty. by dr2chase · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Memory's cheap. It was easier to buy my own (512m) than argue for why it was necessary to run Eclipse. I'd have bought a gigabyte if there were slots in the box that would take it.

  7. I'd like to weigh in ... by B3ryllium · · Score: 3, Informative

    I dislike the way that Eclipse seems to handle projects.

    I work on multiple projects at once, sometimes projects have sub-projects, and none of them are located on my local machine. The way Eclipse handles them is ... less than desirable, in my experience.

    What I really like about Eclipse is the PHP addon, with its function/class outline view. I just wish that, if projects were properly implemented, that the addon would be able to outline all of the functions in the entire project. Now THAT would be cool.

    1. Re:I'd like to weigh in ... by mark_lybarger · · Score: 2, Insightful

      you didn't specifically mention what it is about eclipse's project handling that you don't like. i would mention that you can generally organize your work such that it makes using the ide much easier. eclipse gives you the ability to exclude certain directories for each project.

    2. Re:I'd like to weigh in ... by Samrobb · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I dislike the way that Eclipse seems to handle projects.

      Then let the team know.

      They're currently working on the 3.0 release for Eclipse - one of the topics discussed on the development mailing lists a while back was properly supporting sub-projects. The primary Eclipse team was asking users to submit information on how they would like to see Eclipse support nested projects. If you look through their bug database, you should be able to find the relevant bugzilla entries along with the attached discussions.

      --
      "Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
    3. Re:I'd like to weigh in ... by B3ryllium · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's mostly just that I prefer the HomeSite method of project management.

      HomeSite creates a project file (projectname.apf) in the top folder of the project. It contains a complete list of all the files in the project, and can organize it either by physical folders, or by having virtual folders (sort of like symbolic links, I suppose). All of these .apf files are stored in the registry (eww, I know), and come up in a drop-down list so that users can instantly switch between projects. You can also define projects which concern a subset of an existing project. For instance, I have a "beryllium.ca" project and a "confuzzled" project, and the beryllium.ca project happens to include the confuzzled project (although aside from including the files, there is no special bond between them - at least, not in the project management software itself).

      That, and the difference in search/replace, and subtle text editing differences (drag and drop editing, for example), is why HomeSite is far more comfortable to me than Eclipse. Although I really do like the PHP function outline feature. :)

    4. Re:I'd like to weigh in ... by Earlybird · · Score: 2, Informative
      • HomeSite creates a project file (projectname.apf) in the top folder of the project. It contains a complete list of all the files in the project, and can organize it either by physical folders

      This is analogous to how Eclipse does things. Each project is a separate entity. A project can link to different parts of the file system ("virtual" folders), potentially allowing files to be shared between multiple projects. And you can define filters (working sets in Eclipse terminology) that determine what's shown in the UI. Switching between working sets is a one-click operation.

      Based on these similarities, I don't see how your description sufficiently describes any way in which HomeSite is a superior product; there must be something else here that you're not telling us.

      • Although I really do like the PHP function outline feature. :)

      There's a PHP outline in Eclipse?

  8. The point... by Pac · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This should be obviuos, but here we go.

    JBuilder is not free software (or even OSS). Borland can restrict the use of the Personal edition in whatever ways they want. Borland can simply discontinue the free edition at any time and leave the users without any option short of buying the paid edition or switching development platform (and this is a major problem for any serious development effort).

    You also can't assume Borland will update the product in a timely manner. They can for instance delay the support for a new JDK version for whatever reason and you can do nothing.

    In the end, having control over its development platform is strategic for most companies in this business. Im my shop we are moving fast towards completely open enviroment. In most cases only Windows itself is the last piece that must go but the market still requires us to have it around.

  9. Eclipse 3.0 new features by fatarfy · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here are the new features from the Eclipse 3.0 Milestones 1 and 2.
    Got these links off blogdex this morning.

    Milestone 1: http://download.eclipse.org/downloads/drops/S-M1-2 00306051737/eclipse-news-M1.html
    Milestone 2: http://download2.eclipse.org/downloads/drops/S-3.0 M2-200307181617/eclipse-news-M2.html

    I use WSAD and Eclipse 2.0 regularly. WSAD's (Based on Eclipse 1.0) java editor is weak, but the editor in Eclipse 2.0 is among the best I have ever used.

  10. Fabulous! by jpsst34 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Sure, Eclipse is good, but does it give your mouth a good clean feeling, no matter what?

    --
    How are you going to keep them down on the farm once they've seen Karl Hungus?
  11. Not Bloatware? by sparkhead · · Score: 3, Informative

    Have you compared Eclipse's resource footprint to JBuilder/Netbeans/VA Java? It's more bloated.

    I've been a regular user of VA-Java/Smalltalk for years, and Eclipse uses a lot more resources and is missing many features the Envy-based repositories have.

  12. GUI editor by mughi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    2) No visual GUI editor. This is available for a price, though. I just wish it were free. :(

    It could be that for a general experienced java programmer, GUI editors just don't work as well for Java. What with layouts, different ways to do things, etc., designing powerful UI code for Java is different than say for Win32 (and yes, I've done both). Personally, I'm faster just writing straight code from a logical standpoint instead of dragging in code from a physical one. It's a fairly common sentiment on comp.lang.java.* also.

    1. Re:GUI editor by Michael+Crutcher · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually Eclipse does include a GUI SWT editor. If you install the example plugins the SWT editor is included as one of the examples.
      Granted, its not a full feature editor. But it allows you to quickly lay out all of the components and generate the SWT. I use it and it saves quite a bit of time.

    2. Re:GUI editor by bay43270 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      GUI editors don't work as well for Java because no one has done it right - yet. There is absolutly no reason Java GUI editing can't be as easy as it is in Visual Basic. Take a look at OS-X interface builder. It allows all the flexability of Java layout managament with a single layout (which is graphical AND easy to use). It also supports MVC by allowing drag and drop binding between components and listeners (very cool). What does Java have that makes it so much more complicated??? Nothing!

      BTW, Idea's next version will feature a GUI editor. It promises to be very clean. I don't know if it will catch on because it uses non-standard ideas such as byte code manipulation to keep the code clean. All layout is in XML (generated by the WYSIWYG editor) and the code only contains listeners and component references (even the references are optional if you don't have listeners on those components)

  13. Possible reason for no Drag and Drop by Necroman · · Score: 3, Informative

    Drag and drop has not been fully implemented for all platforms yet. Since the Eclipse GUI is built upon SWT (which spawned from Eclipse), SWT must support Drag and Drop. Currently it is not supported on all OSes that Eclipse runs on.

    If you head over to the SWT development page you will notice that Linux/gtk, MacOS and QNX all still need Drag and drop to be implemented. I know for MacOS, Drag and drop will be in Eclipse/SWT 3.0

    --
    Its not what it is, its something else.
  14. Development Use by blackmonday · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Borland should be afraid. I develop java with Eclipse pretty much exclusively now, and if you're doing server-side java you don't really need anything else. Only thing I haven't figured out how to do is deploy EJB's like Jetace (I use Websphere). Anyone know? Can I export the EJB completely from within Eclipse?

    Back on track, check out this plugin: PMD. It scans your classes for unused variables and a few other things. Some code our company paid for had literally hundred of unused strings in a class!

    1. Re:Development Use by hlee · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Borland is certainly concerned.. when they discovered we weren't going to renew our JBuilder licenses with many of us going over to Eclipse, they sent down a product manager to give us a presentation. At the end of the day, it became especially clear to us that we certainly wouldn't fork out US$3000 or even 1000 for JUST an IDE. Instead, we're spending our budget on Together Control Center (which Borland acquired from TogetherSoft) licenses instead, which has superior round trip engineering to Rational Rose. I did try the free UML diagrammer from www.omondo.com - its not bad - but they're light years away from Together/Rose.

      At the end of the day, I wouldn't recommend paying much (or at all) for an IDE - especially with Eclipse around. Instead if you've a dozen or more developers, and have a technically competent manager, products like Together and Rose do add tangible benefits to the development process (esp. use-cases, class diagrams, sequence diagrams).

  15. Re:Web Development? by Natty+P · · Score: 2, Informative

    Definitely possible...

    JBoss has JBossIDE, a set of plugins for running JBoss and related stuff in Eclipse.

    MyEclipseIDE looks like it offers a plugin that supports several app servers, if you join for $30/year.

    Plus, WSAD (WebSpere Studio Application Developer) is basically just Eclipse with plugins to run WebSphere.

  16. Re:My experiences with Eclipse. by keesh · · Score: 2, Funny

    What's happened to all the decent trolls? Does no-one try any more?

  17. Re:non-Java by mughi · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes. C/C++ IDE

    Cobol

    Thos are just a couple of the official ones off hand. There are others floating around out there, including some commercial solutions.( XML/JSP/HTML support, XMLBuddy ... )

  18. How about JFACE? by linuxlover · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Most Eclipse books (there are only 2 I think) & tutorial are concentrated on developing plugins.

    Eclipse plugins are indeed cool. But what is lacking is good docs for developing stand alone JFace (equivalant of javax.swing) applications. SWT is much talked about being an alternative to Swing. but still, I don't see much documentation on developing stand alone applications.

    For example, I have a small Swing GUI program, size of my program jar is ~1M. I'd love to convert it to SWT/JFace. But I don't want to convert it into a plugin. Because then I'd have to distribute Eclipse work bench with it. The 'minimal' eclipse is around ~12M. So my distribution file size increased 10 fold!

    any pointers appreciated.
    thanks ./LL

  19. For those like me... by Aanallein · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...who'd never heard of this IDE before, and always want screenshots to quickly judge for themselves if something is worth a further look:
    screenshot 1, screenshot 2, screenshot 3. (They're kinda old, so undoubtedly this thing has evolved quite a bit further since then.)

  20. Not enough pictures? by jabber01 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Boy, you'll really hate "man pages" then. ;)

    --

    The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
    What you do today will cost you a day of your life

  21. Re:cross-platform? by Natty+P · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Wrong... Eclipse uses SWT, which uses native widgets, so the only way that Eclipse looks the same on Windows and Linux to you is if you have some kind of Windows looking skin on your Linux box.

    This article shows a screenshot of Eclipse on generic Windows and on Linux...

    Some Screenshots... I think on (Skinned?) Windows XP.

  22. IBM uses Eclipse as a basis by Watts · · Score: 2, Informative

    ..for what I believe is their current flagship Java development tool, WebSphere Studio Application Developer.

    WSAD is a lot bulkier than Eclipse, and integrates strongly with WebSphere for debugging. It also includes a lot more project types than Eclipse, although there are some Eclipse plugins that add similar functionality.

    1. Re:IBM uses Eclipse as a basis by valkraider · · Score: 3, Informative

      I have been using WSAD for more than a year now. I would actually advise against it, our experience has been that it is really really slow - especially with large codebases. It is also a bit buggy, and I dislike that it hides too many details from the developers - but then when they break it is almost impossible to track down and fix. WSAD does not like ANY manual editing of important files related to EJBs and such. We currently have almost 20 developers using WSAD and regret our choice. Especially the code migration / porting projects.

      Just one opinion though, YMMV. We currently have a few tickets open with IBM that they can't seem to resolve - that work fine in WebLogic and SilverStream and JBoss environments.

      This is all under windows, I have no experience with WSAD under linux.

  23. Re:Python??? by mughi · · Score: 2, Informative

    A quick Google search came up with Eclipse-plugins.2y.net which in turn gives us language plugins for Eclipse.

    Down under 'p' is.... PyEclipse

  24. This article tell you how by BreadMan · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Getting your application to work using SWT/JFace without the entire Eclipse framework isn't that difficult. Check out this article for detailed instructions.

    FWIW, I've actually done this and the results are great.

  25. the other book met my needs much better by bojolais · · Score: 5, Informative

    Heavyweight chapter on plug-in development? The Java Developer's Guild to Eclipse (Sherry Shavor, Jim D'Anjou, Dan Kehn, Scott Fairbrother, John Kellerman, Pat McCarthy) has a far better section (over half the book) on plug-in development. From what I can tell, the tutorial section of the book is well-done, though I haven't spent much time with it.

    If you've ever used Eclipse, I'd recommend the other book. If you're completely new to Eclipse, check out the included tutorials. They're surprisingly well-done.

  26. Try Eclipse for CVS by Drakonian · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Eclipse is a fantastic IDE, especially if you are a Java developer. There is a very active community as well, check into the Eclipse newsgroups if you have comments/questions.

    Even if you aren't a Java programmer, it may be worth having a look at Eclipse as a CVS client. Most graphical CVS clients rub me the wrong way. WinCVS is difficult to use and not intuitive. Try Eclipse - it actually lets you look at the projects on the repository and lets you view the resource history to compare any two files. The branching and mergeing features are very nice as well.

    --
    Random is the New Order.
  27. Re:Web Development? by LauraW · · Score: 2, Informative
    MyEclipseIDE looks like it offers a plugin that supports several app servers

    I've been using MyEclipseIDE for the last few weeks, and it's a great plugin. The best feature is the automagic JSP debugging with servers that support JSR-045 like Tomcat 5. I'm eagerly awaiting the new version that is supposed to ship tomorrow, because there are lots of new features like XDoclet support. I think they're adding some EJB tools too, but I'm just doing JSPs, Servlets, Struts, etc, so I haven't looked too closely. I had tried other J2EE plugins before: Lomboz, Sysdeo, etc, but this one is definitely easier to use. The others require you to play all sorts of tricks in order to do JSP debugging.

    The MyEclipseIDE folks have an interesting business model. As I understand it, they're sort of "mining" the huge number of open-source plugins out there, taking the good bits, and integrating them into a suite with a clean UI. (And even writing tests and documentation. :-) I'm certainly willing to pay them $30/year for that. I just hope they manage to survive.

    Laura

  28. Re:netbeans vs eclipse by Knight2K · · Score: 2, Informative

    Eclipse 2.1 has added the feature of being able to integrate external (that is, not actually under the project directory on disk) folders and files into a project.
    I have only used NetBeans briefly at JavaONE, but from what I saw, Eclipse's feature seems similar.

    --
    ======
    In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
  29. Syntax checking as you write the code by Canis+Latrans · · Score: 3, Informative

    One of the most impressive features that I have seen in Eclipse, and a couple of other Java IDEs (CodeGuide for instance) is the ability to parse the code as you are typing it, and report all compiler errors to you (by underlining the problems in red), before you actually do a full compile.

    To me, this feature seems revolutionary. I after discovering it, I had a hard time going back to coding C++ where no such tools exist (to my knowledge). I am always surprised that not many Java programmers seem to know or care about this kind of on-the-fly syntax checking. Coding is much more fun when you can be aware of your mistakes the moment you make them, rather than having to go back and fix them all after you've already forgotten what you were thinking.

  30. SWT and GCG by kupci · · Score: 2, Informative

    Check out this article on SWT and GCG: http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library /j-nativegui2/

  31. agree by ragnar · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Netbeans also has support for this and I'm hooked. Another tool I make extensive use of is PMD, which helps to detect various bad habits in coding. I'm not sure about eclipse, but I know there is a netbeans plug-in to show these things in real-time. I've found it handy.

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    -- Solaris Central - http://w