Eclipse feature configuration via Links

The number of features and plug-ins available for eclipse are really growing in zillions. Overwhelming part is that many have contributed very good features to open source community. Sourceforge is one of it. Initially when i started i had only Eclipse Platform, then RCP, then WTP, then ATF, … and the number is increasing day-by-day. At some point of time we always agree that installing/configuring a third party features is always cumbersome. I have had many difficulties in managing the updates and new versions.

Though its old concept, i recently found this configuration of features via links. The approach is pretty neat and straight forward. You don’t have to touch the platform or rcp configuration of eclipse at all that’s the beauty of it.

I will just take an example and explain how this works. If we want to install a feature in eclipse without disturbing the current configuration, we need to first create a directory by name “links” directly under the eclipse directory (remember this is the directory where the eclipse.exe is present).

If we have the feature from the third party in the directory “c:\example\XYZFeature”. Please remember that under XYZFeature we need to have the “eclipse” directory and under that “plugins” and “features” directories. And now you are almost there to have a clean installations.

if your feature name is com.abcCompany.xyzPlugin, then we create a file by name “com.abcCompany.xyzPlugin.link” in the link directory. Open the file in a text editor and edit it to contain “path=c:\example\XYZFeature”.

That’s it you are there. Just launch the eclipse and it will parse the link directory and the *.link files and your launch will be configured for this.

Hope this helps for some of you who are looking for it in the product development and installation. The real advantage with this approach is you don’t have to enable or disable your feature from eclipse. Just delete a *.link file and you are done.

Aptana : Source code editor for js, jsp, html, css

I have recently used the Aptana Source code editor. Its been almost from 2 months i have been using  this editor.  Somehow i am quite impressed with the performance and the features provided by the Aptana editor. Initially i just used the standalone IDE from Aptana. I pirmarily used it for editing the javascript files for Web 2.0. Initially i really used it for the syntax highlighting, outline view with the structure, code completion stuff and i found it was really really great. Honestly i was actually asking my team too to adopt the same.

I was actually very very happy that its based on the Eclipse as i love eclipse and i am an eclipse evangelist. And some time in mid of November i got to know that Aptana has released the source code to the eclipse under EPL. So the Aptana is EPLed.  Wow for me personally i feel great to see more and more projects joining the Eclipse community. The only thing i did not like about it is that, its under the perforce. So inevitable i need to download the perforce client. But you always need to do some initial setting, as always with the software

I had to start a Web 2.0 project recently and i need to design an IDE. We had some project artifacts (AJAX Runtime) and some proprietary info to be associated, a typical product developement company’s proprietary files, some js, htmls, etc… So the first impression was to get the WST from Eclipse. But i was sure that Aptana provides much better editability, so i just saw how i can really integrate the Aptana into Eclipse. Aptana eclipse IDE has a feature that can be installed as a normal eclipse feature. So, is you really want to have the cool features, to edit the files of Web 2.0 files, then you better to have the Aptana working for you. I was just wondering why the WST project has not come up to the expectations. Probably for the J2EE stuff, may be its fine but for the source file editing, i am not sure of the meturity of the WST plug-ins.

Anyway some how the WST is toooo huge, i am not sure why… if i want to have a product built on the thus, i would think twice… Even though the now-a-days desktops and laptops are fully equipped with more RAM, most customers are expecting the IDEs to be very very compact

In my experience Aptana IDE is cute, small and does good work for you.