Re: OT: Eclipse Additions

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "Andrew" == Andrew Overholt <address@hidden> writes:

Andrew> Now comes the fun part: making Eclipse better for your needs.
Andrew> We're interested in hearing what you think would make Eclipse
Andrew> a more useful tool for you in your work with GNU Classpath.
Andrew> What kind of things annoy you?  What kind of new features
Andrew> would you like to see?  What kind of changes to existing
Andrew> aspects of Eclipse would make things easier for you?  Ideas of
Andrew> all shapes and sizes are welcome whether they be very specific
Andrew> or very general.

In general I think the problems with using Eclipse to do Classpath
development aren't in Eclipse so much as they are in the VMs; for
instance, no free VM that I know of implements JDWP, so there's no way
to debug.

But, here are some things that might help:

* Make sure code formatting can complete handle Classpath's style.
  In 3.0 this wasn't true.  3.1M4 looked better here, but perhaps not
  perfect (I didn't try exhaustively).

  One Eclipse PR worth fixing in this area, courtesy Per Bothner:

  https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=73104

  This one has to do with tab stops and formatting.

  There's an Eclipse style file for Classpath on the generics branch
  that works with 3.1M4.

* Standalone reformatting might be nice, I know you know about that
  :-)

  https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=75333

My other classpath-related (either totally or semi-) items are a
little more blue sky.  The formatting stuff really seems to be the
biggest barrier, believe it or not... Eclipse is actually quite good
for general Java development already IMO.  3.1M4 has some nice
improvements that are helpful, like being able to specify some
properties as per-project instead of per-workspace; I think I checked
all that stuff in on the generics branch a while back.


Anyway, wish-list stuff...

* Better JNI integration, see

  https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=22933

  and the similar-but-not-as-detailed:

  https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=81828

* Make it simpler to submit patches the GNU way.

  https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=74351
  https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=74353

  Even better, have a way to mail the patch right from Eclipse.

* Bug tracking plugin would be "nice to have".

* GCC is talking about moving to subversion, subclipse might be
  needed at some future date.

Tom