Eclipse Europa: evolution or revolution?
Eclipse Europa became available to the world on 29 June, and I’ve spent a few happy hours exploring what it can do.
My standard Eclipse set-up consists of the Eclipse SDK, DTP and the Derby plugin for database-related stuff, WTP for web-related stuff, Subversive for version control and PyDev for Python programming. Installation of Europa has upgraded the main SDK to version 3.3, DTP to version 1.5 and WTP to version 2.0.
So, what do I think of it so far? Overall, it looks more like an evolution than a revolution, with a large number of small additions and changes. None of these are particularly dramatic in their impact, but the cumulative effect is rather pleasing. Features I particularly like include
- Streamlined workspace switching
- The new minimize/maximize behaviour, which allows more flexible use of screen real estate
- The ability to toggle display of invisible whitespace (handy for Python code)
- Grouping of referenced JAR files under a single node in Package Explorer - much tidier!
- The ability to hide the Console view and have it reappear whenever the program writes to the standard output or standard error streams
I haven’t had much opportunity to examine the changes in WTP yet, but DTP certainly seems to have improved significantly. There is now good support for HSQLDB and PostgreSQL, and query results can be displayed in either tabular or textual formats. One particularly nice new feature is a wizard for creating tables. To be precise, it generates the SQL DDL commands to create a table, and these can then be executed in the normal way, or saved to a file for future use.
I’ve encountered two problems, one minor, the other less so. The minor issue is with the Welcome screen. On my system (Ubuntu ‘Edgy’ Linux, AMD 64), I don’t get the nice graphical version, just this:
Perhaps the Welcome screen is constructed using HTML and CSS, and there’s some problem with the CSS? In any case, there doesn’t seem to be any problem with the 32-bit Linux version, which displays the Welcome screen just fine on my PC at work.
The more serious issue (on my home PC, at least) is stability. Eclipse 3.2.2 was rock-solid for me, but 3.3 has locked up a few times already. I’m going to experiment with increasing memory allocation to see if that solves the problem.
July 3rd, 2007 at 1:36 pm
How did you install/run eclipse 3.3? I’m on amd64 (ubuntu feisty) and I unpacked and ran ./eclipse in place only for it to fail to start up. I noticed there’s a 32bit binary in the top-level directory of the download.
paths hidden to protect the innocent:
JVM terminated. Exit code=13
/usr/lib/j2se/1.4/jre/bin/java
-Xms40m
-Xmx256m
-Dosgi.bundlefile.limit=100
-jar /path/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.0.v20070606.jar
-os linux
-ws gtk
-arch x86
-showsplash
-launcher /path/eclipse/eclipse
-name Eclipse
–launcher.library /path/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.gtk.linux.x86_1.0.0.v20070606/eclipse_1017a.so
-startup /path/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.0.v20070606.jar
-exitdata 269801a
-vm /usr/lib/j2se/1.4/jre/bin/java
-vmargs
-Xms40m
-Xmx256m
-Dosgi.bundlefile.limit=100
-jar /path/eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.equinox.launcher_1.0.0.v20070606.jar
July 4th, 2007 at 9:46 pm
Tristan,
Your error message has “-arch x86″, confirming that something is 32-bit.
I don’t think eclipse.org is successfully detecting folk with 64-bit Linux, so you may have inadvertently downloaded the wrong binary. You can download the right one from
http://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/download.eclipse.org/eclipseMirror/eclipse/downloads/drops/R-3.3-200706251500/
I’m guessing that eclipse-SDK-3.3-linux-gtk-x86_64.tar.gz is the one you want.
Also, make sure you have a 64-bit JVM. I downloaded jdk-6-linux-amd64.bin from java.sun.com.
Hope this helps!
July 6th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Nick, that was it. I just went to the download page and clicked on linux in the box for the C++ development package and it delivered the wrong package. I’ve eventually found a base eclipse runtime for amd64 and used it to install the C++ environment. All works now (except that it seems 512MB is not enough to run smoothly under Ubuntu 7.04 - Linux and associated software is getting really shit these days. I’m considering moving to WinXP+vs2005 - and I’ve been Linux-only at home for 9 years so this is no whim).
July 29th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
I’m running Eclipse on a 32bit linux machine, but I’m having the same problem (strange Welcome screen). In all other areas, however, the new version feels very stable.
Not sure about Mylyn, I only started using it a week ago, but sometimes when I’m typing, it will randomly switch the editor window to another file, which is very annoying. Other than that, highly recommended, though.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
Hey - I’m new to the eclipse thing and was wondering how you actually group all referenced jar files into a common space - either that, or just hide them. The filters dialog is much different than 3.2 and the peeps here at my new place aren’t familiar with how to get it to work the same way. Thanks in advance!
August 16th, 2007 at 3:39 am
This bit me too, I needed to install the 64 bit release. Funny how several years after 64 bit consumer cpus came out, those of us who are actually running 64 bit apps are still early adopters.
August 16th, 2007 at 2:43 pm
Brian: referenced JARs should be grouped under their own heading in Package Explorer automatically.
The other way of doing this, which also works in 3.2, is to define a user library and add a bunch of JARs to that library by hand. Eclipse allows you to add a user library to the project build path, which has the same effect as adding all of its contained JARs one-by-one but is obviously quicker and easier. The other benefit is they they are grouped under a common heading in Package Explorer.
August 17th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Boy, this is annoying… if only it was published here: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
Thanks for posting the link… there’s no help anywhere else…. especially all these random collected builds of eclipse that have version numbers that don’t have any reflection on the baseline eclipse.
*sigh*
September 9th, 2007 at 10:07 am
I had the same problem in the splash screen. It would have been less annoying if the links at least would work properly. But they do not or did not.
The were missing the link base (the file:///.. part)
This brought me to the idea that this version makes an assumption about an installed component: the html browser part.
On my edgy box (new install for other reasons) this wat not the case.
I then installed xulrunner (the thingy used by eclipse for its internal rendering in case 0) through synaptic and lo and behold: it worked.
September 9th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
Pieter, thanks a million for that tip. It’s fixed the problem for me, too!
September 21st, 2007 at 7:17 am
Pieter,
Thanks a lot for this xulrunner tip. I was having the same issue and it resolved it for me too…
December 5th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
I must say this was the best I’ve read for a very long time! Oh my oh my what a struggle Eclipse on my Suse installation has been. None of the other so-obvious solution have worked, this one worked right away!
Thanks a million!