[ide-dev] Being a nice citizen and installing Oxygen M7 -- but installat

[Michael Scharf <eclipse@xxxxxxxxx>]

I wanted to install Oxygen M7 to test it and report problems
(if I find any) before it goes GA.

JetBrains EAP (early access program)
====================================

I am beta tester for other software that I use. For example, I
am always on the JetBrains Webstorm early access programs (EAP).
It is sometimes painful because things break and I occasionally
report bugs.

But updating the JetBrains products is really painless:

- when a new version is available, webstorm tells me and asks me to
  install it
- there are two types of installs:
  - simple patches (it downloads some stuff and after a restart the
    application is up to date)
  - downloads: I have to download an image and install it. This is
    very simple: I just drop the downloaded file into my application
    folder.

In the last 4 years I have not had any problems with the updates.
After the restart all my extensions are available. If I downloaded
a new version it asks me if I want to use all the plugins of my
previous install (I always say 'yes)...

Eclipse Installs
================

Now if I contrast this to eclipse, upgrading is sooooooo painful.
I have an Oxigen M6 running. Now I want to upgrade:

- check for updates -- nothing happens
- huh, heck how did I install this eclipse?
  - did I download a package?
  - which package did I download (was it the eclipse SDK or the eclipse for
    web developers)?
  - hmm or maybe I installed it with OOMPF
- great, I decided to download the eclipse SDK
  (for the first time it is not a zip file but a .dmg file -- halleluja!)

And now comes the painful part -- I have installed a few packages, but I don't
remember what I have installed and how I installed it.

- I opened my Oxigen M6 and export the plugins
  - oh soo many plugins, which ones did I install by hand and which ones
    came with the package??
  - I exported the packages that I think I have installed manually
- with the M7 I saw in the import there is a way to install it form an
  existing installation. I decided to import "Form existing installation"
- that worked better than expected
- now the question: where do I find the eclipse marketplace client???
- when I open the new eclipse, it does not show me the list of workspaces
  anymore. I have to find my projects and open them manually

It went quite well (except for the missing marketplace client). But it is
still *very** complicated and I am not confident that I have done the
right thing.

After I successfully installed M7 using the way described above, I tried
to upgrade M6 using http://download.eclipse.org/eclipse/updates/4.7milestones/
==> eclipse showed lots of error dialogs -- I killed it.
Am I happy, that I did not try this in the first place :-)


I just wonder how much enthusiasm a "normal" developer needs to upgrade
to a new version.

I currently do some Java consulting, and the developers at that company
use Mars.2 with Java 8. They tell me upgrading and rolling this out
to their developers is way to complicated... The rather stick with the
pain of using Mars....

If time is money: if I count the time spend (= money lost) on eclipse
installation issues, JetBrains products could be much more expensive
and it would still be cheap compared to the time spend on eclipse
installation problems.... But I love eclipse and in particular
for java development! I have not dared to try IntelliJ, because
I am afraid to fall in love with another IDE...

Michael