I am working on a standalone Eclipse RCP product. My team replaced another team that wrote the infrastructure of the product.
I and my team leader aren't very happy with the Eclipse RCP framework because we feel that it is just very hard to get it to work correctly.
This is because:
The GUI building tools are annoying. XWT is buggy (bindings don't
always work, can't add scrollbars, and this is only the half of it).
SWT also isn't very exciting. I don't like the API and it doesn't
have too many exciting widgets.
Eclipse IDE itself is buggy (we
have to restart it every few hours). We are using eclipse juno. When
we tried to upgrade to luna we ran into some unsolvable issues:
Eclipse Luna: Handlers' #CanExecute methods not called due to wrong context
We have lots of weird bugs (e.g. eclipse looks at wrong selection
service and much more).
Even though there is support and
documentation, we find that it is kind of poor compared to other
solutions out there.
Due to the above, developement of simple
things seem to take too long. We have another .NET product which is
much easier to write.
However, google didn't seem to badmouth eclipse rcp... So I wanted to ask, what do you guys think about it? Do you find it easy to use? Do you find it flexible?
Just want to hear some opinions.
Thanks!!!
Related
I apologise for the very amateur question about E4 but I am a bit confused about a couple of things about RCP development using the new Eclipse 4 framework. I read in this tutorial that one can no longer use any default commands the way we could in 3.x especially for common things like Save, Save As... in the File menu. It says that in E4 we have to write our own commands. The reason I am confused is because the thing I liked about Eclipse previously is that a lot of things are already implemented and we can just extend that to our own needs. But it feels like now everything must be written from scratch.
That led me to considering reusing the command code already written for Eclipse Juno. I had the Live Editor open so I could see the list of commands etc but I don't really see any Handlers implemented for any of them. Then I used the Spy on Eclipse Juno and checked out some of the menu items and they all seem to point to Actions. That really confused me as I thought Juno was based on E4.
I could be completely wrong so I am sorry for asking such a silly question. I only just started using E4 and need to decide whether one of fairly young Eclipse 3.x projects should be migrated to 4.x.
AfaIk, in Juno the compatibility layer translates the 3.x based implementation of the IDE into E4 concepts. This is also the reason why the reusable commands are not yet available.
If you have an 3.x based RCP it should also run using the compatibility layer (and you can reuse the commands mentioned in your question) if no incompatible APIs have been used.
Here is more information (also a tutorial from Lars Vogel): http://www.vogella.com/articles/Eclipse4CompatibilityLayer/article.html
We're developing an Eclipse-based RCP. Recently we've updated to Eclipse Juno and currently we focus on quality, which of course brought automated tests into focus, since the application is quite big and the testing effort delays releases.
We're already writing JUnit tests, but I'm more interested in UI tests. With older Eclipses this would not be a problem. There are plenty of good test frameworks around. Unfortunately with Juno everything changed due to the added ability to switch out the default SWT UI by Swing or JavaFX (at least this is what I've understood about the changes causing problems)
So most of the test tools don't work properly anymore. From past experiences it seems that:
SWTBot seems to get not much love lately and is very unstable (can't find elements in certain versions)
Window Tester seems quite good, but has a lot of problems identifying an element during the test run (especially with pop-ups such as content assist or tool tips)
Apparently Froglogics Squish supports Juno, but since a license costs about 2,5k Euro I have to pass
The same seems to be the case for QF-Test (too expensive).
This leaves Jubula (or GUIDancer, which is the commercial Jubula), which we've tried in the past, but which had similar problems as Window Tester and SWTBot (unstable in terms of changes to the Eclipse platform and difficulties to detect some elements)
I need to know, which tool to focus on / trust in. Does anybody have experience with one of the tools or is even currently testing a Juno RCP (or Juno itself for that matter)? Or does anybody know how Eclipse tests their own platform (if they even do it atm)?
Searching for information related to "test", "Juno" and "UI/GUI" only brings up the commercial products.
For me it is important, to find a tool, where I can use the developed test cased even in future releases, which means: A framework project, which has some support of the community to be able to adapt quickly. Also it is important to also find stuff like tool-tips, overlays or content assists/suggestions) - similar to a Selenium compared to basic HTMLUnit.
At this point I don't even care too much about integration, reporting or compliance to standards..
You can find a comprehensive table of GUI-Testing tools in the Eclipse Wiki:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/Automated_Testing#UI_tests
One important decision you have to make is, if you want to use your mouse to record/create tests (Jubula, QFTest, ...), if you want to be able to hand-write test-code (SWTBot, ...), or if you want to be able to do both (WindowTester Pro, ...).
Eclipse Juno is rather new, and I would expect problems with all of the listed tools, however the migration should not take that long since most of these tools mainly focus on testing SWT-widgets and Juno still uses SWT. So far I have not heard from any RCP Application seriously using JavaFX other than for technical demos, but I would be curious to see them!
The problem I think, is rather that testing Eclipse is hard and GUI-testing is especially hard.
You might want to have a look at this study which finds and explains the major problems:
http://swerl.tudelft.nl/twiki/pub/Main/TechnicalReports/TUD-SERG-2011-010.pdf
If you believe this study, JUnit-testing is usually preferable to GUI-testing. Well, with Juno you have the big advantage that Unit-testing Eclipse now is easier than it ever was because the framework switched from inheritance and singletons to dependency injection, which makes it far more testable.
I'd suggest you too look at Xored's Q7, which is used for GUI testing of some of Eclipse projects including Eclipse DLTK, Eclipse LDT, Eclipse Tigerstripe and the tool is just perfect : it let you develop dozens of UI tests per day per engineer, and do not have stability and incorrect-recording problems. It's designed specially and only to test Eclipse-based apps and obviously the best in the niche.
However it costs money, which can be a blocker for you (like squish), but they have a free Community version, which is enough for most of use-cases. As well as those Xored guys just introduced pay-per-testexecution pricing model -- the tools will be free and you have to pay as you go only per tests executed monthly (less than 5000 is free). More about new model is here eclipse-testing.com
Is there any benchmarks or study done comparing these two IDEs in terms of
-- stability
-- developer productivity
-- features
-- performance
-- etc.
I am an Eclipse user (not by choice). Not sure about stability, but performance wise NetBeans is far supperior at least with the lates versions that I worked in; personally, I think NetBeans has enough features to make it a good development environment but I can't tell you for sure, it depends on what is the scope of your task. Overall, eclipse is a good IDE, but NetBeans is just a little better...
Mostly working with eclipse nowadays.
All I can say is M2E is a pain.
With no disrespect intended to the developers of m2e ...
This is the simply the absolute worst plugin for maven. It is slow and it is painful to use.
For big maven projects with more than 70 module components, you can forget about having a quick eclipse evironment.
If you use mvn eclipse:eclipse, the deprecated plugin for configuring eclipse, I believe you are faster with eclipse than with netbeans. Especially when it comes to refactoring.
If instead you use the official m2e plugin ...
Oh my god!
I am answering to this question due to the pure shear pain of waiting for eclipse.
" Invoking CDI Builder" because an #Inject collaborator moved around in the class, triggering a massive build wait time delay... god!
Eclipse! Well... Eclipse is a great IDE for getting started, on small projects, but as projects get enterprise level, and if you use m2e ... oh! you will cry!
And wonder ... how can it be this bad.
Netbeans! Perhaps nota any better in the end.
Last time I used Netbeans, i had two major complaints, that were total deal brekers:
(a) Netbeans was simply awful when dealing with massiven class refactoring.
You change a class name on sub module A, that affects modules B, C and D.
And until you class renaming, move over packages is done, you can go take a coffee, and order a cab.
(b) netbeans had a bug in parsing interfaces, namely there was some sort of regular expression that would take the longest time to run.
So if you can use the old deprecated mvn eclipse:eclipse, you would end up being far better of.
With that said.
The Netbeans debugger compared to the eclipse debugger is light years better.
I prefer the graphics of netbeans and I prefer the simplicity of netbeans.
Just try using the "expressions" where the autocomplete does not work, and you ave to go to "display" to get autcomplete to work and copy it bakc over to expressions!
Eclipse is a patch work, with hundreds of thousands of developers making hundreds of different components of the IDE, leading to an overall result of a total inconsistent product.
Eclipse is a never ending set of settings, just open the preferences and ...
Netbeans, UI is always desing for maximum simplicty.
As I wait for my m2e to finish rebuilding prjects based on whatever whim lead eclipse to start a new build, I start considering again if I should not revisit Netbeans and install the eclipse formatter ...
Eclipse is really in bad shape, In my humble oppinion.
Ther performance of eclipse has to improve 100 fold, especiall eclipse + m2e has to get way way better.
Intelli J - i have never tried.
The best IDE have used so far, is wihout any doubt, Microsfot Visual Code for Javascript and TypeScript.
You use Microsoft Visual Code, and just wonder why eclipse is not like that.
If you are doing Angular Js/Typecipt, simply forget about any other IDE out there. Microsoft Visual Code is the best thing there is, it is fantastic and joy to use.
Blazing fast and light and good looking on every platform of your desire.
But for java + maven, the echo system is a bit lacking on good options.
The man is not supposed to wait for the machine.
A human is always supposed to be slower then a machine ... this is not the case with eclipse m2e, this I can tell you.
The furstration!!!!
Unless you have lots of hardware to throw at it, go with Netbeans.
I have a VM running CentOS 7. At this time, I am only able to allocate 2G ram to the VM, and running Eclipse Oxygen for PHP on it is painfully slow. Netbeans runs just fine in this configuration.
I'm sure some Eclipse devotee would suggest giving the VM more ram which might probably resolve the issue, but unfortunately that is not currently possible.
Another thing that ought to be mentioned is that Eclipse is rather unique in its UI. For example, virtually every editor on the planet uses Ctrl-F to "Find", then function key F3 to "Find Next". Ctrl-G is "Goto line number". Netbeans follows this convention. Eclipse, however, uses Ctrl-K to "Find Next" and Ctrl-L for "Line number".
This won't be an issue if you use Eclipse and nothing else, but if you're like the more typical developer, you use Eclipse when appropriate along with some other tool when appropriate. You will get confused sometimes and use the wrong shortcut. This creates unpredictable problems, particularly if you're unsure what the wrong shortcut just did to your file.
It's not a "performance" issue as per the application, but it slows down the developer. To me, that's just as bad.
Again, some Eclipse devotee might suggest that Eclipse shortcuts can be configured any way you like, which is true, but really, does anybody have that kind of time? Eclipse comes with literally thousands of configuration options, and it's an Internet Search to figure out how to change almost anything.
Netbeans doesn't have thousands of configuration options, although there are things you can tweak. It just sorta mostly works the way you expect out of the box.
To conclude, the actual slowness on less-than-most-super-powerful hardware is probably the biggest thing against Eclipse. I don't know what the code is trying to do, but Netbeans is somehow able to do it with less hardware.
Eclipse and Netbeans are both good IDE (Integrated Development Environment) programs. If you are just a Java, C++, C or Fortran programmer you can use any of them.
If you are WEB base developer (For Example: JSF, Serverlet, Applet) in this case NetBeans is much more powerful then Eclipse.
On the other hand, If you are mobile developer for Android OS, in this case Eclipse is much more powerful then Netbeans.
So it depends on your programming league :)))
I have to choose a sizable (but not too sizable!) project for my next & last term in university. I thought maybe a nice IDE for scala is what the world might need right now :).
Would you like to see an IDE specifically made for scala? Or are you more comfortable using (the already available) plugins for popular (mainly java) IDEs & editors?
What do you think about the whole idea?
P.s. I'd make it open source & would add features one by one, so if it doesn't end in one semester, it won't be a problem from the university perspective.
Actually, not anymore. IntelliJ, Netbeans and Eclipse all have Scala-specific efforts that have more man-hours in it than you could possible start to begin putting in at a last term. And there's two very interesting efforts that were results of projects like that, both of which were made to contribute to any IDE effort: ENSIME and Scala Refactoring.
And, beyond these efforts, most programming editors, such as jEdit or TextMate, also have some Scala support to one degree or another.
So, really, contributing to one of these projects might be a good idea, but making a Scala IDE is not.
For his Masters thesis, Mirko Stocker contributed the refactoring functionality to the Eclipse Scala plugin, see:
http://misto.ch/scala-refactoring-talk-at-scala-days-2010/
Instead of creating an IDE from scratch, why not contribute a major piece of functionality to the Eclipse plugin, all contributions are welcome. For ideas, see tickets.
Or instead of reinventing the wheel.. you can contribute..
http://wiki.netbeans.org/Scala
But I am not sure if it will be somehow enough for your university work. At the same time, as you see, those plug-ins still require a lot of work.
While writing your own IDE you will just trying to solve problems that were already solved and tested. Besides, even if - what kind of IDE is that, which allows you to do
Scala (even if its great) only. So just for simple xml edit of ant file or whatever you will need another tool.
I think Brian Clapper already summed it up nicely.
I'd suggest something like CheckStyle but for Scala might go down well and be reasonable to tackle as a project.
Not a Scala developer but an Eclipse plug-in would probably be a worthy senior project.
Concur. Operating systems, text editors, and IDEs...does the world really need more of them? No. But everyone wants to write one.
If you want to do something useful, as opposed to simply academic, develop an extension for an existing IDE. Eclipse, NetBeans, Komodo, etc. are all nicely extensible through plugins.
The Eclipse Visual Editor project seems to be dead, no commits, no updates. Any one know what is happening?
Update 2: The project has been archived (i.e. dead) since June 2011 again.
Update: The project has been revived and is now under active development again.
Its pretty much dead due to a lack of developer support. Here are some recent posts from their mailing list talking about a lack of movement on the project.
What's happening? It's called NetBeans, and it's already happened.
I'm going to get voted down for this but they know it's true. I love eclipse and have used it religiously since I started Java. I'm not saying I like Netbeans, it's just all I hear whenever the concept of a Java visual editor is brought up.
The Jigloo plug-in for Eclipse is a pretty great alternative to the Visual Editor. Though still not quite as nice as the Netbeans GUI editor it is fairly robust and fully featured, especially compared to what was available in the Visual Editor plug-in. Definitely should give it a shot.
Actually NetBeans has gotten MUCH MUCH better. I've used Eclipse, Netbeans and IntelliJ for a few years each, and NetBeans is at least as good (performance, usability & features) as the others now.
It's also improving more quickly than the others are.
They have people working full time on alternate language support, so you'll find they have the best Ruby support in the industry, and I believe Python is about to become that good as well.
Of course, Eclipse still has that crazy-cool todo list that remembers which files you worked on for each bug and can take you back to the set of files/edits for any bug you've worked on, that's really amazing to use and I don't think it's available on either of the other platforms.
--- Revision from years in the future ---
I have used Netbeans more and really have to give the award to Eclipse. The difference has been in vertical programming environments--most will target Eclipse and ignore netbeans. You rarely need these, but when you need them there is often no way around them. If Netbeans does have an equivalent, it's often buggy to the point of not being usable, generally the biggest issue is emulator support.
You won't run into these unless you are working in a specific industry--Android development is one, the primary drive was to support Eclipse, NB seems to trail. Another I've worked on is in the TV/Cable industry.
For raw java development, however, I'd still give Netbeans a little edge because it's the environment that was targeted and supported by sun.
Visual Editor is doing a new release, 1.4, on September 16. Installation instructions for the RC are here:
http://wiki.eclipse.org/VE/Update
FWIW, the project did stall for a while. But there is a new, and relatively diverse group of folks working on it again. Most of the recent work is concerned with making the new release compatible with Eclipse Galileo.
It's officially dead as of May 2011. It's archived here, but slow to download and tricky to install. Instead, there's a new editor, WindowBuilder Pro.
Currentlty Google have Open Sourced the Windows Builder Pro. It seems nice
yeap,
http://www.eclipsezone.com/eclipse/forums/t91368.html
Yes, sadly, it is dead. Looking at the aforementioned email threads regarding it's revival I get the feeling that even if it does get picked up it will quickly collapse under the weight of some new requirements ("make it universal, edit everything from SWT to HTML").
WindowBuilder can be a good alternative. I had several problems with VE and I end up with WindowBuilder who worked for me perfectly.
http://www.eclipse.org/windowbuilder/