[news.eclipse.tools.hyades] Re: Hyades 3.0 - an experience report

["Harm Sluiman" <sluiman@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Chris, thanks for the input. I hate to say it this way but "we value your
input" ;-)
Let me try to address some of your comments:

We use the 3rd process as a buffer if nothing else so we don't hang the process
being monitored or the workbench doing the monitoring.
This also makes our launch and connection model for remote machine common. It
also introduces some complexity that we try to hide. You have run into the
biggest problem we had with 3.0. As you know the launch configuration support in
the JDT came in late in the cycle, and unfortunately changed several times in
that short window. There had been thought given to launch, launch for debug and
self hosting, but other launchers, for example profiling were not thought out.
So we ended up with out the extension points we needed and even in 3.0.1 we will
still be using some private apis from PDE in the self hosting scenario. Eugene
can explain the details if you are interested.

We do respect the config that was set up, we just had many problems due to the
above issue. A new 3.0.1 will help you a lot.
As for the impact of use having a singleton RAServer to talk to, we have tried
to ensure the old impls can handle the new commands coming down the pipe from a
newer workbench. The newer RAServer is naturally better, smaller, faster but the
old one should work. You just got hit with the launch config extension problems
we had as 3.0 was shut down.

Perhaps Eugene or Richard can help with the filtering when self hosting problem
you are having.

Regarding update mgr. I agree with you, and in fact under the new project
structure we have been asked to make Hyades an installable "product" complete
with update mgr support etc.. Stay tuned...

Regarding doc, perhaps Nellie can contact you off line for some suggestions.

Point noted regarding the CVS instructions. we will update them. (Qiyan)

# of plugins is a problem, and we have a feature request in place to reduce the
number. Part of our problem is that Hyades is packaged in several different ways
by consuming products, so we need to be able to slice and dice. But we certainly
can reduce the number and will.

"Chris Laffra" <Chris_Laffra@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:cf8b6n$sn8$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> I tried to run Hyades 3.0 on Eclipse 3.0. I can profile "Hello World",
> but when I try a runtime workbench nothing happens. The process
> launches, Hyades is collecting, and then the process terminates.
> After 2 hours of study, I found out Hyades 3.0 is connecting to a
> RAServer started as a service at XP boot?  That has a default VM
> of version 1.3.1, which is not enough to run Eclipse 3.0 on.
> This server was from a really old WSAD installation I happened
> to have installed on my machine.
>
> What puzzles me is why Hyades ignores the JRE setting on the
> launch configuration and chooses the one a random RAServer
> tells it to use. Why do we even need a server to set up a connection
> between 2 processes that know each other well?
>
> After passing -consoleLog, I saw the above error. It would be nice
> if Hyades passes that in by default (as it does with -clean).
>
> Now, after killing the RAserver process, and running the Hyades 3.0
> version, and setting up a 1.4.2 VM, I can profile Eclipse startup.
> The issue now is that I see very little data coming by. No matter
> what I select, there seems to be lots of profile data being lost.
> I turned off all filters I could find.
>
> Installation of Hyades is cumbersome. You really need an update
> site, and have a feature with an install handler to set up the RAserver.
> Currently, it is too much a manual process. Extracting zip files into
> the plug-ins directory is really bad style. The update manager is
> much nicer, as it allows me to install and remove an entire feature.
> Same argument is for GEF and EMF.
>
> Finally, can you coordinate the documentation offered by all
> the Hyades plug-in projects? You really pollute Help > Help Contents.
> And..., why does Hyades need so many plug-ins? I checked out the
> most of them (165) leaving out the user doc plug-ins. If I want
> to find something, I have no clue where to start.
>
> In your CVS instructions, you could point out that the
> repository to attach to is directory /home/tools at
> dev.eclipse.org. The instructions suggest /home/eclipse, and
> it took me lots of intuition to guess the proper directory.
>
> Conclusion: nice tools, hard to install and get working.
>
> Hope this helps,
> Chris Laffra
>
>