vendredi, décembre 14, 2007

Old Europa ?

I'm using eclipse for years now (I started with 1.0-RC1, AFAIR). This is just a great IDE, and it has evolved greatly through years. Not that I consider IDEA or other IDE to be bad, it's just a question of feeling comfortable with the current one I'm using.

Lately, I switched to the latest 3.3.1 version.

Bad move...

This is the very first time I experienced regressions. OOM errors all of sudden, bad completions, a lot of burden. Ok, "let's wait for the patches" was my first reaction. Too bad, 3.3.1.1 is out there, but there is no way to get it installed, due to many 403 errors, whatever mirror I select.

At this point, I'm starting to consider to rollback to 3.3.0, or, a more drastic move, switching to another IDE(A?).

Don't get me wrong : I really like Eclipse, but lately I feel like it has lost some momentum. The web site has been changed in a way it's now a PITA to find valuable informations (for instance, just try to get some release notes or to download an old version). There are more than 1000 plugins available, out of which pretty much are just random student homeworks (IMHO, of course). And the update process is just a nightmare (don't get any error while downloading a load of packages, otherwise your are good to start it all again). Not to mention that package removal is a O(N2) process, as you have no clue about which one you should be removed first unless you know the dependency graph...

Wake up, Eclipse Foundation !