[news.eclipse.newcomer] Re: Newcomer first impression: Piece of Crap

[Steve Blass <swb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dave Dyer wrote:

> This was my third or fourth attempt to grok eclipse, and every time, my
> first impression has been "what a piece of crap".  Eclipse is monumentally
> unfriendly to experienced have users with complex projects to import.
>
> Well, this time I finally got past it all and got one of my major projects
> running. so I can offer some more coherent complaints.
>
> 1) The message "resource x is out of sync with the file system" is
> ubiquitous.  There seem to be at least three variations on it.  Since
> there is no other activity than what eclipse is doing, there is no
> excuse for it to be confused or breaking itself in this way.

While I agree this can be incredibly annoying it sounds like something 
somewhere touched your file(s) since Eclipse synched resources to file 
system.  Could you be running a build process outside of Eclipse control 
or ... any number of things can do that.  Eclipse can be (more than?) a 
little bone headed about not seeing what it does not actually do itself.

> 2) there ought to be a way to point eclipse at a project already
> in place, and get it to use the sources in place.

There are ways, not all elegant but there are ways.  The easiest is to 
give in and make a new copy of the sources.  It is an unfamiliar piece 
of crap ide after all and  Eclipse is quite capable of blowing your 
existing source tree away if you slip up.  You can import existing 
projects into Eclipse without moving files around and while it isn't 
always simple you can turn an existing file tree into an Eclipse project 
with a .project file. Eclipse is big on CVS so it seems that making 
copies of stuff is just par for the course.

> 3) there ought to be a way to include/exclude files or directories from 
> a project build list, without removing them from eclipse's
> hierarchy view, and especially without deleting them from the file
> system.  Mature projects accumulate a lot of extra stuff which needs
> to not confuse the IDE.

There are a number of ways to filter things out of views and build 
lists.  Try clicking the little down arrow icon in the right corner of 
the Package Explorer view and click Filters to start.  That may violate 
the idea that junk in the src directories shouldn't bother the IDE but 
clean src directories in large mature projects can be a good thing.

It is a fact that crap stinks.  Some prefer the Eclipse stink to various 
other stanky stinks.  Welcome aboard.