Would it be possible to install Eclipse on a flash drive?
Heading into my second year of high school computer science and at the school they use pcGRASP/jGRASP for writing in Java, which personally I don’t really like. I delt with it for one year but don’t really want to use it for another.
If installing Eclipse on a flash drive wouldn’t work, do you need full admin. privlages to do a normal install?
Installing (well extracting) it on some usb stick shouldnt be much of a problem. You can work around that path issue with the subst command (type “subst /h” at the cmd line for details). However, you should keep in mind that the sheer amount of read/write accesses will lower the lifespan of the stick and that the bandwith is pretty low in comparison.
So, it might be nicer to write some scripts (eg batch) which copies the stuff over and use subst for mapping that dir over to “X:”.
Eclipse should run fine from a flash drive - it doesn’t need any “installed” component to work - just download the ZIP and unpack to your drive.
Setting the Workspace might be fun, unless you can guarantee that the drive will be mapped to the same drive letter on all machines you wish to use. If you can’t, either manually select a Workspace each time you load, or make a number of batch files that use the -data argument to point to the right drive, and just run the one which corresponds to the drive the removable storage has been mapped to.
Word of warning - flash memory wears out eventually with repeated access. It’s good enough for transporting data and taking pictures onto, but if used as a general drive with lots of write operations it will eventually fail. I don’t know how resilient the modern drives are, so this may be a moot point now, but I recommend doing a bit of research into it.
… but you can use a microdrive, which is about as slow as flash, but has the advantage of not being sensible to write problems flash memory has.
It’s about the same price, nowadays. [edit] or even cheaper for big storage capacities
[edit] the failure of a flash memory is not an eventuality, it’s part of it. Most chips have a write capacity of about 100000 per bit, that is, write 100000 times the same bit and bang, it’s out.
Alright, well I guess the best soltion then would be to install it onto the networked student drive under my name, flash drive seems too much work/risk for what it is worth.
If I have Eclipse at school and at home, what would be the best/easiest way to keep my files in synch?
Subversion (or well… CVS if SVN isnt an option for whatever reason).
You would need some online repository tho.
Thanks, I’m checking out Subversion now
I’ve got an Apache server so that shouldn’t be a problem.
or you could copy your workbench back and forth
or you could copy a single project back and forth
But if you can access an SVN server both from school and from home, that’s the easiest, of course. Repositories’ main purpose is to keep multiple environments in sync 
While we’re vaguely on the topic …
At work, we migrated our CVS repository over to SVN without doing sufficient background research into the quality of SVN clients, and have on occasion been handicapped by the short-comings of various SVN clients.
The 2 we use are subclipse (for eclipse projects), and tortoiseSVN (when subclipse breaks).
We end up resorting to tortoise all too often, due to the many bugs in subclipse. This is extremely frustrating having previously used the eclipse CVS plugin - an absolute joy to use, a wonderful piece of software.
Subclipse can on occasion also be painfully slow; especially on machines with slow hard-drives;
it appears to thrash the disc alot more than any CVS client ever did. (the dreaded “Updating SVNStatusSubscriber”)
On several occasions we’ve also come across a fairly serious SVN server-side bug when performing merges between 2 branches involving files that have been deleted, and then recreated.
So - rant over - to my intended question[s]
What SVN client[s] do you all use?
How heavily do you use them?
and do you find them to be frustratingly buggy also?
Version control software is the last place you want bugs to appear,
From my experience, I struggle to recommend SVN over CVS - especially if you are an eclipse user on a mid-range PC.
What is different about Subversive? I just downloaded Subclipse, but not sure which one I should go with now…
hmm, I havn’t but the name seems familiar - perhaps someone else in the office gave it a try.
I’ll have a look all the same, cheers.
“CVS” and “joy” shouldn’t be used in the same sentence :), unless it goes something like, “After using CVS there was no joy left in me.”
I use TortoiseSVN and Subclipse all the time. I only do updates and checkins via Subclipse because , well, I can never tell what it is REALLY doing for any other operation. I like that it handles the renames that result from refactoring though, it’s an absolute must for that. For anything like merging I always go to either the command line or TortoiseSVN.
But if it’s only your projects that you need to move back and forth, just copy your Eclipse workspace to and from the USB drive when you change locations. Always work of the normal haddisk or network drive. Taht way you can flip flop between locations 10000 times before the USB drive wears out :).
If you’re the only one working on the project, there’s really no point in setting up a version control system.
It will only make sense if there are more people working one it.
What will work is if you just install Eclipse on your PC on the same drive as the drive you work on at school and copy over the complete installation using your USB stick. And if you’re done at school, copy the workspace back to your PC via the USB stick.
Using a USB stick to work on directly, like people said, will be cumbersome and unreliable.
Nah… its really nice when you’re the only one, too. It allows you to do harsh changes w/o copying dirs around or commenting out huge blocks, because you can always go back if you have to. Additionally you get minimalistic backups on your way, if you use another hdd for the repo and doing automatic backups becomes easier, too (customized hotbackup.py + cobian backup in my case).
As soon as there are more than a few classes its really worth it.
But then you are using CVS as a back-up system. Which is fine if you’re happy with that. Maybe a matter of personal taste…
For JEmu2 (counting >300 source files), I’m not using CVS anymore since I’m currently the only one updating it. I just can’t be bothered with checking in/out, labeling, and maintaining a CVS server when I’m the only one accessing the project anyway. I simply zip and backup every version I release and go from there. If I want to try out harsh changes, I make a quick back up of the old source and revert back when needed. No biggie, making a zipped and backed up version using a simple little script is just one double-click away.
If at some point more people want to participate again, I’ll surely set up CVS again but until then I personally don’t feel the need.
CVS is Completely, Verifiably, Sh**, so of course it’s a waste of time.
If you use a proper SCM, there is no extra effort involved - if you’re the sole developer, it versions automatically, and you only have to provide change messages either a) when you choose to or b) when you export for other developers.
I wouldn’t settle for anything less, personally.