[seek-dev] Eclipse 3.0, an option for general GUI access to SEEK CVS

[Steve Tekell]

FYI

Eclipse 3.0 (http://www.eclipse.org/) was recently released.  I upgraded
this week.  It's definitely a big step forward, no doubt that any Eclipse
2.1 users should eventually migrate.  Some features I missed from other IDEs
are finally there - library sets, code folding, workspace switching, regex
search and replace, and more.  It still lacks any of the J2EE support found
in most other Java IDEs (even Netbeans supports webapp projects and JSP
debugging).  Although, I have found the MyEclipse plugin
(http://www.myeclipseide.com) to fill in most of the gap pretty well for $30
(far far better than the free Lomboz BTW).

One thing of particular relevance to SEEK is that Eclipse now supports SSH2
for CVS (using the connection type "extssh").  Although, there was a plugin
for 2.1, it was a separate install and used the connection type name of
"extssh2" which conflicted with Tortoise and other tools, so I have been
waiting on 3.0 to recommend it to others.  I actually think Eclipse 3 should
be considered by non-programmers who want GUI access to SEEK CVS (and don't
have an app they like).  

I prefer it to Tortoise for several reasons.  You can browse the latest CVS
without getting files, including different branches and versions.  So no
need to spend a day downloading just to get one file and no driving blind
since you can see the whole tree.  Also, it's a single pane tree view which
I prefer to windows dual pane view.  You can view text files (txt, html,
xml, java, etc) without exiting off to a separate application.  You can
perform a batch operation without having to specify your password for every
file.  All the tools for diffs, synchronization, histories, annotations, are
all integrated.  Eclipse 3 also provides some handy tricks like commit sets.

There are some drawbacks.  The download is fairly large - 87Meg.  (Share it
on a LAN if you can).  Eclipse perspectives and some other GUI features can
be confusing.  File associations have to be configured in Eclipse to open
files in the proper external editors (Powerpoint for example).  The more you
work with external editors the less advantageous it is.

On the other hand, installation is just an unzip and I was able to access
SEEK CVS without any configuration changes for SSH2, just fill in the blanks
in the wizard for a new CVS repository.



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Steve Tekell       
http://seek.ecoinformatics.org/Wiki.jsp?page=LTER.stekell
SEEK-Web              http://seek.ecoinformatics.org
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