The Lazy Dev

I've downloaded Eclipse 3.7 final, codename Indigo, Java Edition (not JEE).
As expected it has Maven integration by default, and that's good but
is not the real good news.

The good news is that it works great, more than I could even dream.
The integration exists and comes without any negative effect: you can
just import Maven project by default.

What is great is that when you import a project, Eclipse analyzes the
POM and propose you to install some plugins afrter it: so while importing my
projects Eclipse asked me to install WTP integration and another plugin
dedicated to OSGI, for example. And after the restart, all the existing projects
take advanteges of the new plugin and I had to do nothing. Going to Preferences | Maven | Discovery will show all the catalog.

It's not finished. I installed Spring Tools Suite from
http://www.springsource.org/node/3151 and not only installation was
smooth and working, but after the restart all the spring based
projects gained the Spring Nature again without doing nothing. The
project explorer also show a nice organized view of a project.

From Eclipse Marketplace I quickly added Subclipse, EGit and MoreUnit
and I'm ready to go.

First Eclipse release I'm really happy about since, I thing, 3.2. At
those time was the Eclipse features to be important: new refactoring,
new automation etc... Since a few years what I was missing more the
lack of integration with the project management (maven) and
application configuration (spring).

Now the gap has been filled. Good work.

When around 2002 I switched from Netbeans to Eclipse I was attending
university, coding just for passion. It was a great step: Eclipse knew
what I were doing while Netbeans was just a big GUI with coloured
syntax and integrated compilation. It's ability to understand code did
not go beyond a for cycle. He was like a guy that call itself a
programmer just because he can write a for loop.
Eclipse was smart, he can do code refactoring, that means that he had
a more high level understanding of what was going on.

In the first years, Eclipse grew with me and development was a two
people game: I coded *with* Eclipse.
In recent two or three years I continue growing but Eclipse was stuck.
Now he just does not understand me anymore, like a girlfriend that
still talks about things we talked five years ago, that still has same
vision of the world. Our relationship is going to end.

Nowadays understanding code is not enough. Projects are big, made of
many modules, with sophisticated dependency hierarchy and
configuration. If the IDE can't understand what is going on, you do
not have enough support, you are left alone and you loose time
understanding issues that involves projects configuration, relying on
test, without any refactoring abilities in the field.

Eclipse just does not understand this "multi module projects" thing,
is not integrated with maven and the builds result are non
deterministic. I want to tell the ide "this module is not here
anymore, from now on belongs to this other project". This statement
means a lot of changes in project config and in subversion and so on.
This is a predictable change, there should be a refafctoring for this.

I'd like that my IDE moves in this direction, helping me in managing
modules, deploys and different kind of configuration and runtime
environments.

I hope that IntelliJ IDEA, which I am trying now, will answer to at
least some of my needs.

Ok, the day is arrived. I will say things that make me sad, because I loved Eclipse, I loved developing on it. I like to consider myself an Eclipse ninja.

But it is no more the time.

I started developing on Eclipse at the end of 2002, with version 2.something. I came from kawa/JBuilder/Netbeans and when I tried Eclipse it was a big, BIG boost. Something incredible for the time. Years ahead everything else. Refactoring, incredible CVS integration, great test support, amazing completion and aid. Wonderful.
But, since a couple of years, evolution of the product slowed down. Just to say, it is not acceptable that it still does not ship with a built in and always working SVN support. Subclipse and Subversive... you know. And you need a basic IDE support for svn, even if, like me, you do almost every SCM and Maven operation from the command line.

Eclipse development is almost stucked since last two years, or maybe is focused on stuff I do not care about. I need a great coding editor, jUnit support and refactoring. And Eclipse got them all. The problem is all the rest. And the update system is the greatest failure of all. This is non acceptable at all. Everyday I use apt and Firefox which have amazing modular update system that never broke. And I use apt in Ubuntu development even now. And it works, always.

Biggest problem: one year development cycle is too long nowadays. Example? Eclipse 3.5 Galileo ships in June 2009. I install Ubuntu 9.10 in September. Galileo is broken on it so install 3.6 Helios (in development), but hibernate/spring plugins are almost non-installable on it, and so is Subclipse, you can survive without but when Eclipse starts using a .xml.svn-base spring file instead of the actual one because it does not have any subversion support in it and latest subclipse does not install on latest eclipse milestone... ARGHHHHH, I went mad.

No subversion support, no maven support. I mean, basic support, nothing fancy. Basic. Instead: nothing at all. One year of wait to have new features, and development version is a mess with plugin dependencies.

So, it is time to use Idea community. Installed, imported a project from POM, immediately everything is working, dependencies, subversion. Smooth.

I will see how this goes, but maybe after almost eight years, my relationship with Eclipse can be closed.

You can set this going to Window | Preferences then General | Keys.
There, using text filter, you can for example write "rerun" and you
will find the shortcut for the first two advice here. Let's start.

F9 re-run last test
Yes, is different than F11. Without this, you have to move your hand
to pick the mouse and point to the single last run test, right click
and at this point you just lose your patience.

CTRL-F9 re-run last test debug
same as before, far less used but sometime should be needed...

ALT+CTRL+W close others editors
Sometime, often, you need to clean open editors to clean up your mind.
Being CTRL-W the standard shortcut to close "tabs" for all
applications, this sounds like a nice and intuitive shortcut.

ALT+F12 show jUnit view
I usually keep jUnit view minimized. The reason is that there is never
enough space to read the exceptions or the errors but being almost
full screen. So I keep it minimized and it opens automatically when
test runs, with a serious size. Sometimes you need to recall it. Being
F12 the shortcut to recall the Editor wherever you are, is easy to go
from jUnit to Editor and back with this two shortcuts.

ALT+J MoreUnit jump to test
Bbeing CTRl-J already set for the default and essential Eclipse
incremental search, we need a different one for this small and
essential plugin that allows us to navigate back and forward from a
class and its test case.

Default shortcuts really important to know:

ALT+SHIFT+X to run many things
ALT+SHIFT+Q to switch to different view
F12: go to Editor, from (almost) wherever you are.
CTRL+. navigate to next warning or error.
CTRL+, navigate to previous warning or error.
CTRL+SHIFT+L to show all the shortcut for the active view!