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F3 The external tool builders support has several problems that, combined, make the feature essentially unusable. Rather than address multiple fixes of varying risk at this late stage, we feel it is best to pull out this support and address the feature properly post 2.0. For the various problems, see bug 20403, bug 20404 and bug 20336 (all of which we were previously considering as candidates for F4). Although 20403 and 20404 are simple bugs with simple fixes, bug 20336 is more interesting and is the real killer here. Note that the rest of the external tools support will remain in. To remove this support requires two low-risk changes: 1. Removethe XML for the External Tools Builders property page extension. 2. Make the external tools builder do a no-op. This is needed so that if people have added external tools builders previously, they will no longer run. The builders will remain configured on the project, but will not have any effect. To fully remove them, the user will have to manually edit the .project file.
It is never good to be withdrawing promised release functionality at the last moment. I believe that external tools builders would provide value to certain users, and that the priority should be on fixing the more serious problems that would prevent it from being useful. We are within epsilon of having something useful, and recommend we push ahead rather than draw back. See my comments on 20336.
We are going ahead with this after all. The other PRs above have been marked for F4 and are awaiting approval (20403 was previously approved).
