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The Plans for 3.0
The Eclipse group determined that version 3.0 need not be compatible with previous versions of Eclipse. They wanted this to be a significant enhancement and determined this would offer the most flexibility in terms of moving forward. You should, however, be able to import a workspace and the relevant metadata from 2.0/2.1 into 3.0 (though not the other way around). It is primarily with the plug-ins where incompatibilities could be an issue as the underlying APIs may change slightly.
There are three primary elements where upgrades were made for 3.0: the overall platform, the JDT and the plug-in development environment. While enhancements to the plug-in architecture are great and will ultimately benefit all Eclipse users, I will focus on the other two and sub-items thereof insofar as they are directly related to Eclipse as an IDE for Java developers.
Upgrades to the Eclipse Platform
The primary "themes" in upgrading the platform were to improve the user experience, to enhance the plug-in architecture and to enable Eclipse to be used as a platform for non-IDE applications (rich client). From an IDE user standpoint, we can expect to see a number of items and architectural changes which will make the user experience better, including such items as:
- Easier installation and setup.
- Better wizards (as available through the plug-in architecture).
- Better overall performance of Eclipse.
- Better integration with the user's file system.
- Multiple workspaces and other multi-tasking features.
Up until now Eclipse, while straightforward, still took a little getting used to - especially for novice users. Occasionally plug-ins would stall, and there was little interaction between Eclipse and the OS/file system (2.1 has to be manually added to the Windows Start menu if you want it there and attributing file types to Eclipse is also a manual task). It seems that 3.0 aims to solve these issues and more.
In addition to these "themes", the Eclipse group is looking to make a number of other enhancements including:
- Improve Ant.
- Remove dependency on Xerxes XML processor (J2SE 1.4 now supports XML).
- Improve team development.
- Improve table and tree widgets, allow for Swing support and other low-level UI enhancements.
- 64-bit support for the UI.
More information on Eclipse 3.0 plans can be found at the Eclipse Web site.
Upgrades to the Java Tools
Eclipse is a base-level IDE - the idea isn't to have a full-featured IDE with wizards and visual editing tools, that is what plug-ins are for. So improving Eclipse as a Java IDE is a matter of easing the development and integration of plug-ins, providing UI tools to make these easier, and as is the case with JDT, provide core tools for Java editing. The main two themes for JDT enhancements were to add support for the "extended Java family", and to improve the user experience for Java developers. What this means is that enhancements to JDT will include greater support for both files that refer to Java files and files that contain Java directly within them, such as JSP and SQLj, as well as better refactoring, debugging and code formatting/navigation.
Milestone 2
So the plans were made when they began development of 3.0 (and I assume updated as they progressed forward). Now we have an M2 release that includes a number of new features and enhancements to the Eclipse platform and JDT. I will cover what I see as the most notable, but a detailed list can be found at the Eclipse Web site for both M1 additions and M2 additions.
What Was Added in M1
Milestone 1, which was released in early June, included a number of new features.
While a number of enhancements were related to performance or application-level improvements like better Mac OS X support, the ability to run Ant in a separate Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and support for multiple monitors; I found most of them to be minor yet helpful enhancements to the developer's experience. Some of the most noteworthy improvements:
- A new view that shows method call hierarchies allows developers to see what methods are called from within a given method.
- Source tips are now shown with the usual color-coded formatting.
- New quick fixes make for easy changes of method invocation statements without proper parameters.
- Ability to see a hierarchical view of sub- and super-types for types, methods and packages.
- Step-through JUnit debugging.
- A number of settings changes that allow for greater control over source output, getter/setter method templates, coding style checks and incompatible library issues.
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