Eclipse in Action 247
Eclipse in Action | |
author | Gallardo, Burnette and McGovern |
pages | 383 (15 page index) |
publisher | Manning |
rating | 8 |
reviewer | Simon P. Chappell |
ISBN | 1930110960 |
summary | A good book that lives up to its name. |
Overview
With a book like this it's difficult to know where to pitch the level. Do you aim for the lowest common denominator or do you assume some experience on the part of your reader? This book seems to have pitched itself well, not pandering to the absolute Java newbie, not afraid to get down into the code and yet gentle enough that newer Java developers can follow easily. The heavyweight chapter on writing plug-ins is at the back where it shouldn't frighten those of a sensitive nature.The book is divided into two sections. The first and largest section concerns actual use of Eclipse during Java application development. The second section is for those who wish to write plug-ins for Eclipse.
The book takes a very 'Test Driven Development' approach to Java development and this shows in the manner that Eclipse is presented and taught. Emphasis is given to the tools that come with Eclipse, especially Ant, Junit and the CVS client. For those already skilled in these tools, this might seem like filler, but remember that there are still pitifully few Java developers using even these simple and free tools. My hat is off to the authors for their TDD evangelism, skillfully disguised as Eclipse usage instruction.
What's To Like
I liked the progression followed in the book, first teaching the basic operation of Eclipse and then moving on to the tools that come with the base install.What's To Consider
Some may consider that the material on Ant, Junit and CVS is filler. The 'Test Driven Development' theme may be a little too much evangelism for some.I use Eclipse on a Mac OS X box and I felt that there was very little discussion concerning the cross-platform attributes of the tool. All of the screenshots were from a Microsoft Windows build of the software; a Linux or OS X screenshot would have been helpful.
One more niggle and then I'm done. There is no information on using Eclipse with other programming languages (a couple of paragraphs in the introduction chapter doesn't really count). I've recently started tinkering with Ruby and have used a Ruby plug-in to allow me to work within Eclipse as I learn the language. This is a wonderful testament to the power and extensibility of Eclipse.
Summary
This is a good book. You know it's a good book when you already use the tool (both pure Eclipse and IBM's WSAD) regularly and you find yourself learning things that you had not previously been aware of. If you are working with Java and want a good free IDE that's going to grow with you, then Eclipse is a tool you should try -- and consider this book the User's Guide that would have been in the box if Eclipse came shrink-wrapped.
Table Of Contents
- Using Eclipse
- Overview
- Getting started with the Eclipse Workbench
- The Java development cycle: test, code, repeat
- Working with source code in eclipse
- Building with Ant
- Source control with CVS
- Web development tools
- Extending Eclipse
- Introduction to Eclipse plug-ins
- Working with plug-ins in Eclipse
You can purchase Eclipse in Action from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Re:best ide ? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) No drag/drop editing. This really is a must, and I can't think of why they haven't bothered with it.
2) No visual GUI editor. This is available for a price, though. I just wish it were free.
Re:What's The Point? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:best ide ? (Score:3, Interesting)
if you need a gui editor, then use netbeans. it has an excellent gui editor and is free. if eclipse is the hammer, then gui editing is not a nail...
Re:best ide ? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not free...but I don't think I could go back to Eclipse.
IDEA definatlly is the best Java IDE out there.
GUI editor (Score:5, Interesting)
It could be that for a general experienced java programmer, GUI editors just don't work as well for Java. What with layouts, different ways to do things, etc., designing powerful UI code for Java is different than say for Win32 (and yes, I've done both). Personally, I'm faster just writing straight code from a logical standpoint instead of dragging in code from a physical one. It's a fairly common sentiment on comp.lang.java.* also.
Re:best ide ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Having said that, Eclipse is pretty good, and much more pleasant to use than NetBeans.
Development Use (Score:5, Interesting)
Back on track, check out this plugin: PMD [sourceforge.net]. It scans your classes for unused variables and a few other things. Some code our company paid for had literally hundred of unused strings in a class!
Re:best ide ? (Score:3, Interesting)
How about JFACE? (Score:3, Interesting)
Eclipse plugins are indeed cool. But what is lacking is good docs for developing stand alone JFace (equivalant of javax.swing) applications. SWT is much talked about being an alternative to Swing. but still, I don't see much documentation on developing stand alone applications.
For example, I have a small Swing GUI program, size of my program jar is ~1M. I'd love to convert it to SWT/JFace. But I don't want to convert it into a plugin. Because then I'd have to distribute Eclipse work bench with it. The 'minimal' eclipse is around ~12M. So my distribution file size increased 10 fold!
any pointers appreciated.
thanks
Re:I'd like to weigh in ... (Score:3, Interesting)
HomeSite creates a project file (projectname.apf) in the top folder of the project. It contains a complete list of all the files in the project, and can organize it either by physical folders, or by having virtual folders (sort of like symbolic links, I suppose). All of these
That, and the difference in search/replace, and subtle text editing differences (drag and drop editing, for example), is why HomeSite is far more comfortable to me than Eclipse. Although I really do like the PHP function outline feature.
Re:cross-platform? (Score:2, Interesting)
This article [ibm.com] shows a screenshot of Eclipse on generic Windows and on Linux...
Some Screenshots [xesoft.com]... I think on (Skinned?) Windows XP.
Re:best ide ? (Score:1, Interesting)
This article tell you how (Score:4, Interesting)
FWIW, I've actually done this and the results are great.
Re:best ide ? (Score:4, Interesting)
One of my biggest complaints with Eclipse was the inability to open a file or compile to a directory outside of the project workspace. Additionally, i found the refactoring to be slow when compared to IDEA.
Try Eclipse for CVS (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if you aren't a Java programmer, it may be worth having a look at Eclipse as a CVS client. Most graphical CVS clients rub me the wrong way. WinCVS is difficult to use and not intuitive. Try Eclipse - it actually lets you look at the projects on the repository and lets you view the resource history to compare any two files. The branching and mergeing features are very nice as well.
Re:best ide ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Since I first used IntelliJ IDEA, I cannot go back to any other editor. And with each version, it keeps getting better and better. (I'm on the Early Access Program for the next version... just wait to you see what it has in store! Wow!)
Re:GUI editor (Score:5, Interesting)
BTW, Idea's next version will feature a GUI editor. It promises to be very clean. I don't know if it will catch on because it uses non-standard ideas such as byte code manipulation to keep the code clean. All layout is in XML (generated by the WYSIWYG editor) and the code only contains listeners and component references (even the references are optional if you don't have listeners on those components)
Re:Development Use (Score:2, Interesting)
At the end of the day, I wouldn't recommend paying much (or at all) for an IDE - especially with Eclipse around. Instead if you've a dozen or more developers, and have a technically competent manager, products like Together and Rose do add tangible benefits to the development process (esp. use-cases, class diagrams, sequence diagrams).
agree (Score:3, Interesting)