[news.eclipse.tools] Re: workspace startup event

["Scott Stanchfield" <thetick-usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

An idea...

Perhaps we need a "scheduling" feature in eclipse. Users would have complete
control over it, scheduling how often certain features are executed. (Could
be startup, shutdown, every x minutes...)

Plugins that want to execute on startup could request this in their XML, and
when eclipse loads the first time with those plugins, the user could be
informed.

The user would be presented a dialog stating that "Plugin x is requesting to
be run each time you start eclipse. This may require a longer startup time
and more memory consumption. However, if it does not run some functionality
may be lost [press "Details" to see what functions would be lost]". (The
plugin could also request other timings, like shutdown, every hour, at 8pm
each night...)

The plugin's XML would contain a brief description of functionality that
would be disabled. For some plugins, this might mean that no functionality
would be available. For others, only partial function would be lost, or the
plugin might have to perform more processing when it's first actually used.
[NOTE: plugins that simply say "I won't work" should be highly discouraged.]

The user would then be able to make an informed decision.

In addition, the plugin authors would have to consider what would happen if
the startup code was not executed. Hopefully this would lead most plugin
authors to avoid using it, but those that do use it would have some
functionality disabled.

As an example, in VA Assist, I never used its scheduling facility. So having
it run everytime I started VAJ was a resource waste for me. If presented
with the above dialog, I'd say "no". Other folks like to use that facility
to automate builds/exports/imports, and would definitely want to select
"yes".

Eclipse would have a preference page that would list all plugins that
request scheduling and the user could change those settings. (What would be
really cool is that if eclipse would time each plugin's load and check
memory usage, and present this info so the user would know which plugins are
the nasty ones -- not always possible, mainly due to starting threads, but
an interesting idea)

A bit more complicated, but it really puts the responsibilities in the right
hands:
* users must say "yes" to acknowledge they're taking a hit
* plugin developers must consider what functionality could be disabled,
and/or determine non-scheduled means of running their function
* plugin developers would have to write extra specification (for plugin.xml)
to set up this function -- hopefully, extra work will discourage this
practice, but it's still available.


-- Scott

==============================================================
Scott Stanchfield    thetick@xxxxxxxxxxxx  http://javadude.com

Lead author of "Effective VisualAge for Java, Version 3"
                                      http://javadude.com/evaj

VisualAge for Java Tips and Tricks     http://javadude.com/vaj

AWT & Swing FAQ Manager, jGuru.com
Visit for Java Enlightenment!             http://www.jguru.com
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