Trying out Eclipse 3.3 Europa

July 13, 2007

I took the plunge this week of moving from Eclipse 3.2.1 to Eclipse 3.3
Europa. Technically, I went from the previous WTP release to the latest one. This WTP bundles
some J2EE and DB features with the standard Eclipse. I don't really use it, but others
on my team do.

I think this is the first time I have migrated from a prior Eclipse
version successfully with 0 problems. I launched the old 3.2.1 one last time to Export my
Preferences. Next I backed up my old eclipse dir to eclipse-old, and extracted the new version
of Eclipse. Then I launched the new Europa. I was a little scared about importing the 3.2.1
preferences, but it worked and I haven't seen any problems so far.

A couple of
cool things. I was intrigued by the new ability to auto Format code on saves. Unfortunately,
my current team has crazy coding standards that differ depending on the type of file (namely
constant files, and SQL files).

I was happy to see that the ctrl-shift-r (Resources)
screen has been updated. It now allows easier selection of files with the same name but in
different projects. Previously it would just show build.xml and have a separate tab window to
select from which project. Now it just lists all of the build.xml files but with the project
name next to them for a single select box.

What's bad? I don't really
know for sure yet. One thing is that the WTP bundle doesn't include Weblogic
integration yet, though a few blogs mention that it is coming soon. It might already be out
since I haven't checked since last Friday. This doesn't really affect me, but
others on my team are waiting for the patch.

So I like it. It looks a little cleaner,
and I like the few differences I have seen, and overall it works just like before. Nice work
Europa team!