Re: [platform-ui-dev] CDT feedback from students this semester

[Bruno Medeiros <bruno.do.medeiros@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 10 January 2017 at 15:04, Doug Schaefer <dschaefer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: <platform-ui-dev-bounces@eclipse.org> on behalf of Mickael Istria <mistria@xxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: "Eclipse Platform UI component developers list." <platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, January 10, 2017 at 2:33 AM
To: "platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx" <platform-ui-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [platform-ui-dev] CDT feedback from students this semester

* Eclipse is "project oriented" rather than "file oriented". To get the value of the IDE, one usually needs to import the project in workspace and may even need to configure it. For quick fixes, it's too much overhead.

In recent discussions, it has really hit me that this is one area where Eclipse has really failed the C/C++ community. I was always asked, “What’s a C++ project?” There is no correct answer to that. C++ developers don’t think of the systems they are working on as projects. It’s just a collection of code, that may sit in different points of their file system. And I’m sure many non-Java, and even some Java, developers think the same way. The Eclipse project oriented approach is the number one complaint from the CDT community and I’ve never had a real good answer why we were forced into that mould.

Doug.

Yup, the project-oriented approach is definitely a downside in Eclipse, not just for C/C++, but for any IDEs that heavily rely on external tools. It either makes the IDE behaviour at times somewhat confusing or limiting, or, it places a bigger implementation burden on a language IDE to work around the standard Eclipse way of doing things.

IMO, with the advent of LSP the above limitations are becoming more apparent and important.

(If anyone is interested in specifics, see for exemple: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=508488 or https://dev.eclipse.org/mhonarc/lists/lsp4e-dev/msg00009.html )

--
Bruno Medeiros
https://twitter.com/brunodomedeiros