Anyone besides me really dislike Eclipse?

Miscellaneous Topics
#1

Ok, it’s a love/hate relationship. I love programming in Eclipse, but when it comes to updating the editor it’s a total nightmare.

How is it that everytime a new Eclipse is released I have to download the whole editor, install it separately from my existing one, and then re-install all the addons I’m using, and also setup all my projects again. If I persist on using ONE version older (3.3.1 instead of 3.3.2) then I hit a wall regarding adding new addons, since most current addons require the newest version of Eclipse.

I’m really starting to get annoyed by Eclipse. I have 3 installs of it on my disk, all pretty much messed up. Now I have to upgrade to the newest version!

Is there no way to upgrade my existing Eclipse? I’ve tried installing (unzipping) of existing installations but everything went totally fubar.

#2

IIRC the docs explicityly say not to do this because it causes all sorts of trouble.

Yeah, I also find upgrading Eclipse versions a bit of a pain, but usually I only tend to do it once a year at most so it’s hardly a major problem. I was starting to get tired of Eclipse, but after spending a weekend tinkering with Visual Studio and C# and being constantly annoyed by it’s stupid behaviour and dodgy code completion I’m back to loving Eclipse again. ;D

#3

What about NetBeans? Is the upgrade-curve so steep there?

#4

if you program in unix environment, you could try IntelliJ for free. If you use windows, then you have to pay for it :P, but its better than eclipse.

Updating eclipse isnt that hard tho, you could use the internal upgrade tool (Help --> Software Updates --> Find and Install)

#5

Only for addons, and patches to Eclipse, not when you have to jump a version, like 3.2.2 -> 3.3.0

#6

It’s not much different I fear. Especially the upcoming 6.0 version seem to steer into an upgrade nightmare, since they changed the plugin-mechanisms and the auto update. I hope 'til the final release there will be a migration assistent.

#7

I don’t use any add-ons, so it’s not a problem. The only add-on I ever wanted to use was the profiler, which I couldn’t get to get work. I profiled with java.exe instead (which didn’t help anyways).

I guess the secret is not to use any add-ons.

#8

Yes, i don’t like Eclipses update procedure at all. JCreator has the best update procedure imo. Just install the new version over the excisting one and your done. No need to uninstall anything. Thats why i use it.

#9

I updated from Netbeans 5 to 6 with no issues at all. I’ve grabbed several milestone releases as well, all with no issues.

What upgrade problems are you talking about?

#10

hmm, I saw an option to upgrade to new versions like this… it’s turned off by default, look it up
I know it’s definitely mentioned in subclipse upgrade instructions as I saw it and upgradet subclipse from 1.2 to 1.4 like that.

#11

Broken projects and incompatible add on modules not working after update.

#12

Is there any compelling reason to upgrade? Our uni upgrades one a year for that reason, and so do render farms; unless it’s a bug fix then continue using your IDE until your project is completed!

#13

Yeah, to fix all the bugs in whatever release you might have. Of course some get fixed… and others get broken. Bah.

Cas :slight_smile:

#14

I have multiple projects, and none of them will ever be “completed”.

If I want to install new add-ons into Eclipse, then some update sites require me to have the latest Eclipse.

It’s especially annoying to set up everything from scratch when many of your projects are SVN based.

I don’t understand why they can’t make Eclipse better when it comes to upgrading it, most software today have some sort of “Check for updates” or “Update now” feature.

Mozilla FireFox is really good…although not all extensions work properly between upgrades.

#15

There is a reason why Windows Server has far fewer releases than the consumer versions of Windows - and it’s this very reason. Typically a professional team will stay with the same version of software for a long period of time, for example Filmworks uses the same graphics cards throughout the rendering of a film and rarely change software throughout a project.

If a project is never “completed” then it isn’t a project, and many people get caught up into this “must install latest upgrade/package”; like I said our uni installs packages once a year, maybe you should try it. Make a list of what you are using, then set up your environment to use just that for a year! Sure some fancy gadget will come out but if you didn’t plan to use it then then you should not use it now since it was not in your plan.

#16

hmm only platform updates are suppose to be a pain.

are you using extension locations? export you format style download pages etc. But yeah that really should be ONE xml not all over the place. if they can fix that it would take the sting out of most of the stuff, installing plugins is pretty painless.

IntelliJ doesn’t work for me, it relies on shortkeys a lot, for a zillion things(well a zillion for me, anything beyond 5 is too much CTRL+space CTRL+shift+j CTRL+shift+f F4… and I already forgot the 5th.)

eclipse is great. they just need to wrap-it tighter together.

I’d be very careful about sticking to one version next to being inflexible if you fall asleep you might wake up in the stone age. Your development strip isn’t that fragile/risky, frameworks and other 3rd party technologies are a totality differed matter.

especially when it comes to visuals if changing stuff makes hell break lose you might have to wonder about if there aren’t underlaying problems causing problems(fixed pixel layout anyone?) on the flipside if your trying to make a living you don’t have to win the beauty contest too.

#17

I develop NetBeans plugins, so yeah, there is a compelling reason to upgrade.

Actually you get used to it very fast and you get a real problem once you are forced to use another IDE. It just feels like you can’t do anything anymore :wink:

#18

But for someone who is not developing plugins to an IDE where compatibilities is an issue, why would one want to change regularly?

#19

The reason I wanted to upgrade Eclipse is this:

Vanilla Eclipse comes with no color coding or syntax insight for JSP pages, so I wanted to download some WST or whatever it’s called extension for Eclipse. It didn’t allow me to download the extension since I was using version 3.2.2, and not 3.3.0!

If you’re one version behind in Eclipse you can’t download and install the latest addons? That’s ridiculous.
I might have 100 projects in Eclipse, you’re telling me I need to recreate them all from scratch just for simple JSP color coding?

They haven’t seemed to given this much thought!

Besides, about 2-3 new versions of Eclipse are released each year. Now, it seems, they’ve split up the original editor into 5 different editors:

  • Eclipse IDE for java developers
  • Eclipse IDE for Java ee developers
  • Eclipse IDE for C/C++ developers
  • Eclipse for RCP/Plug-in developers
  • Eclipse classic

More nightmare! :slight_smile:

#20

Eclipse has one major release every year, and it is not 5 different editors but 1 with 5 alternative setups for it. The best thing you could do is actually place different Eclipse environments in different directories (which Eclipse allows you to do). For example I still have an old version of Eclipse on my backup that I could still run today if I wanted to, there is no need to have a single IDE for 100 different projects spanning different environment needs.