Having a bad experience with Eclipse so far
I talk a lot about IDEA and how much I love it, but I haven’t used Eclipse for more than a few minutes in a year or two. I’ve read a lot about Eclipse and I’ve followed the “New & Noteworthy” for almost every milestone, but I haven’t actually used it since probably version 2.0 or earlier. I thought I should put my money in my mouth and use Eclipse so I can have a little more backup for my claims about IDEA.
So, I tried Eclipse 3.1 M2 today and so far it isn’t going well.
The download process
I was just complaining in a previous entry about the Jakarta download process, but Eclipse’s is much worse. I’m familiar with mirror sites and download pages, and it was still a confusing process just to find the file to download.
I was looking for Eclipse 3.1 M2. I went to the main Eclipse download page, which I found on the main sidebar, and saw information about how Eclipse 3.0.1’s release has generated lots of traffic, and I should find a mirror closest to me. I didn’t want Eclipse 3.0.1, so I looked around for a link to where to download newer versions like Mx releases and nightly builds. I looked around the site a few times, thinking maybe I was at the wrong part of the site, but eventually I decoded to try going to the Eclipse 3.0.1 mirrors.
It turns out that the message about Eclipse 3.0.1. did not mean that the mirrors were only for that release. So I looked for a mirror near me, but most of them were in Taiwan. I am in the United States. Some sites use GeoIP to show you a list of mirrors near you, and some other sites will at least group the mirrors by geographical location, so it’s easy to find the ones that are near you. The Eclipse mirrors were sorted by the name of the site, however.
I tried to find some that looked like they were from the US. I tried two or three of them, and none had Eclipse M2. (This wasn’t specified in any of the links, I had to visit the mirrors to find out that they didn’t have it.) I thought it would be easier to go through the mirrors if I could find some near me, so I went back to the mirror site and I found the link under the mirrors which said it would bring me to a geographical listing.
I clicked the link, and was brought to a page called “the status of Eclipse mirrors,” which contained a confusing, unnecessary graph at the top and a bunch of brightly colored tables of numbers and more smaller graphs underneath.
I thought I must be in the wrong place at first, and clicked Back, but then I realized this was the mirrors page, and I saw the list of two-letter country codes. I found “us” and clicked it, and a new window opened, containing the same page I was just on, except scrolled down to the US mirrors.
I selected the first mirror in the list, Buffalo University, because my college is connected to them via Internet2. This opened another new window, this one containing a list of names and modification dates for a bunch of HTML and CSS files, and some folders. I saw a folder called “downloads” so I clicked it; this brought me to another list of files, this time most of them HTML and PHP.
At this point I gave up, and went back to the mirrors page and tried another link, this one to calvin.edu. I saw the same file list as I saw for the Buffalo link. I went back, and I noticed that some of the mirror links had “HTTP” next to them, and some (like the two I had tried) said “FTP.” I tried the HTTP link to eclipse.mirrors.tds.net. Finally, this was an actual website, not a list of files.
I clicked “3.1M2″ and was brought to a M2 download page (though the title of the page was confusingly “Eclipse Tools Project”). Right at the top was a section called “Eclipse SDK” with a bunch of links. I was about to download it when I realized that I didn’t want an Eclipse SDK, I just wanted the IDE. I wasn’t planning to develop any Eclipse plugins or Eclipse RCP applications. So I scrolled down and looked for something like “Eclipse” or “Eclipse IDE.”
I scrolled through all the sections like “RCP Runtime Binary” and “Platform Runtime Binary” and “JDT Runtime Binary” and I started to think maybe I had to download all of the parts of Eclipse separately. I scrolled to the bottom and didn’t find anything that looked like a main download.
I scrolled back up and down a few times and then looked back at the first one, “Eclipse SDK.” I read the description “The Eclipse SDK includes the Eclipse Platform, Java development tools, and Plug-in Development Environment, including source and both user and programmer documentation. If you aren’t sure which download you want… then you probably want this one.” This seemed like what I wanted, especially since I didn’t know which download I wanted, and I wanted the JDT. So I clicked “http” to download it via HTTP (I don’t know why they think I care whether I download from HTTP or FTP).
One observation I had is that Eclipse is a huge download, over 80MB. IDEA seems to do way more than Eclipse does, and it’s only 30 or 40MB. I wonder where all the size comes from.
Installation
One thing that bothered me already about Eclipse was that the Windows distribution was a ZIP file! I thought Eclipse and SWT was all about native integration, and distributing applications in zip files is not what Windows programs normally do. It’s version 3.1, Eclipse has been around for years and years, it seems that they could’ve made an installer by now.
I also noticed that the Mac download was a .tar.gz file, instead of .dmg.gz, the standard package format for Mac applications.
Anyway, after it finished downloading, thanks to the huge zip file size, and Windows Extraction Wizard’s blinding performance, it took 20 minutes just to get Eclipse unzipped.
First run
I’ll continue this story in a later entry…
UPDATE: You can read about the rest of my experience with Eclipse in a followup article.
November 11th, 2004 at 7:24 am
I think getting used to a new IDE is never easy, we have so much “finger memory” invested in our old IDE. Being an Eclipse user, I recently tried IDEA, and I could go on at similar lengths about things I found hard to get used to.
So you need to get properly used to a new IDE before you are in a good position to enumerate its bad points compared to the old IDE.
Being used to eclipse I don’t have problems downloading a new milestone, and the size is not important to me. I would look forward to comments after a few weeks of usage.
November 11th, 2004 at 8:12 am
The reason they specify http or ftp is because of firewall restrictions. Some firewalls prevent one or the other.
November 11th, 2004 at 10:39 am
I really do not understand the need for an installer for Eclipse which just adds complexity to something that doesn’t require it. When you unzip the files to your directory of choice you’re done. There is no need for an installer.
November 11th, 2004 at 10:41 am
I don’t know why you are bothering to re-evalaute eclipse since it is pretty obvious how biased you are against it. If your already complaining about the download and set-up, it’s likely your entering this evaluation with a closed mind. Maybe give it a try when your loosen up.
November 11th, 2004 at 12:10 pm
I love Eclipse and have for quite some time. With that said, I think the web site and download mechanisms need a serious overhaul for the “common user”.
November 11th, 2004 at 1:29 pm
I am definitely biased against Eclipse, in the sense that I don’t like it, and I like IDEA very much. However, I had no bias against the download/install process. All of the problems I had are genuine problems, and things I think need to be fixed about the Eclipse site and install process. It took me an hour from when I first tried downloading Eclipse, to when it was finally installed. That’s not about bias, that’s just crazy. I didn’t expect to be able to write 1000 words just about problems I had downloading and installing Eclipse.
November 11th, 2004 at 2:14 pm
Indeed, the eclipse downloads seem to give too many options, and it would be handy to have a big flashing arrow pointing to THE ONE AND ONLY IDE download link.
But as far as I am concerned, I am happy that there IS at least a FREE download for a good IDE. (i am an eclipse-fan, but i’ll deliberately just use “good” as i’m sure IDEA is also a good IDE)
About the ZIP thingy, I am in fact SOOOO fond about this simple solution for an installation (that targets technically competent people anyway, that know themselves how to drop a shortcut on their windows desktop etc), that we’ve also decided to go for a ZIP installation for our technically-oriented tool. Who needs registry-settings anyway??
Cheers
Erwin
November 11th, 2004 at 4:38 pm
To do Java development, it is sufficient to download a JRE (~14MB for JRE 5.0), the Eclipse platform binary (~25MB) and the Eclipse JDT binary (~15MB). This adds up to 54MB. The current IDEA build (Irida) has a size of about 60MB with JRE and 40MB without JRE. Roughly the same as with Eclipse - although the basic Eclipse system doesn’t really support J2EE, XML or HTML as IDEA does.
The Eclipse SDK is so much bigger because it contains the full source code and the full programmer’s documentation as well as the PDE system.
November 11th, 2004 at 4:55 pm
I’m working with Eclipse every day and I don’t like it.
It’s buggy, slow, confusing and misses some essential web development tools.
There is too much to detail on this topic but the above statement sums it up. I’d switch to any other IDE in a blink if I had to choose.
November 12th, 2004 at 11:03 am
November 15th, 2004 at 11:34 am
I’ve recently tried Eclipse and had the EXACT same problems. And, after I finally got it installed and played with it a bit, I found very little that merits switching from IDEA and quite a bit missing from Eclipse which IDEA has had for quite some time, and I’m not even a heavy Java developer using J2EE or XML or any of that jazz. Keith’s complaints about Eclipse are one hundred percent valid. There is something to be said that downloading a beta of IDEA can be done in as little as 3 (super easy) steps, and finding and downloading the latest Eclipse stable release takes over an hour for computer savvy folk. I agree the zip ‘install’ is a nice solution, but there are a lot of other nice things about an installer such as association, installing start menu items, putting things in the usual program folder by default, etc. As for switching IDEs, I got hooked on IDEA after using it just once, and every subsequent time I use it, I like it even more.
December 28th, 2004 at 4:32 pm
I think I’ll go and take a look at this “IDEA”, I gave up trying to download Eclipse due to the nasty web pages that you have mentioned. Good blogging…
March 23rd, 2005 at 8:20 pm
A Zip file, can’t you extract a zip? Any developer that can’t figure that out..
March 23rd, 2005 at 8:49 pm
Matt, I don’t know what you’re asking me. I unzipped the Eclipse download so obviously I can “extract a zip.”
May 27th, 2005 at 6:00 pm
I’ve been looking at eclipse and it really starting to Piss me off. I expected a little slow-start because every different ide takes a little getting used to. Typically when I need to learn something, I will play with it for a while and then go RTFM and then comeback again. the idea being that when u play with it the way it works kind of becomes evident… its not.
And besides its buggy. I suppose if you used eclipse in a vanilla way without pre-existing projects to integrate with its easy. Small confusing like - how the source folders include/exclude does not update the package and navigator view. “Run as” - runs different configurations when project is selected in Package explorer versus Navigator. It seems something so important like WHAT EXACTLY being arbitrary should have been fixed LONG AGO. (they dont give u a clue of which launch config they just ran)
They dont update things- they dont output all their errors in one place- and some they dont at all…
I cannot imagine how people are using this thing. Ofcourse if one discovered most of the bugs and learned to avoid doing certain things then high-praise from that person is pretty irrelevant.
Tearing my hair out.