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Date: Fri, 02 Dec 2005 17:03:28 -0500
From: Alex Karasulu <aok123@bellsouth.net>
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To: felix-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: IDE Lockin? (was Re: Repository/package structure)
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Jeff McAffer wrote:

>and of course, it is not particularly useful to an Eclipse-based 
>developer.  The good thing about PDE is that it directly and inherently 
>supports OSGi bundle development with extremely accurate classpath 
>renditions and tooling for maintaining versions etc.  It also puts in 
>place a simplified process that means you don't have to think about 
>project structure much.  Of course, this clashes directly with Maven's 
>simplified process :-)
>  
>
Question is: Do we want to have IDE lock in?  Won't we alienate 
contributors and perspective committers if we force them to use a 
particular IDE?

I must admit I'm loving eclipse today.  Here's what happened to me over 
the years where IDE's are concerned:

Vi/Emacs JDE (pre 2001) ->
JEdit (2002) ->
Eclipse (2003) ->
IntelliJ IDEA (2004) ->
Eclipse (Today)

As you can see I change my mind frequently.  I'll use what is best for 
the task at hand.  Now a days Eclipse is really kicking arse all over: 
speed, features, support for j2me, j2ee, and of course for OSGi, for web 
dev with WTP stuff the list goes on and on.  It's looking really good 
these days coming from a guy who favors the command line over UI.  FYI I 
just switched from IDEA which is a fat pig now with 5.0.  Eclipse 3.1 is 
also faster and has this excellent PDE tool (nice job btw).   IDEA 
however is just pleaseant to program with.  It's far superior to any 
other IDE I've used so far. I think it's slicker yet lacks the features 
and speed of Eclipse hence my recent switch.

Anyway the point is not which IDE do we use.  This is not a question for 
us to answer.  We cannot alienate users of other IDEs.  Like I said 
yesterday I was an Intellij IDEA user and still want to reserve the 
right to switch IDE's if Eclipse does not meet my needs in the future.  
This does not mean I favor any IDE ultimately.  I change with the wind.  
I would like to retain this freedom and to protect others that want to 
develope with any IDE as part of this community.

Jeff, and other Eclipse peeps, please don't take this personally.  We're 
here to maximize freedom for our community not to constrain them to a 
particular IDE.  We need a tool that allows us to generate descriptors 
for various IDEs.  And thus we should try to conform to it's layout what 
ever that may be.  Plus as another requirement the tool should be a CLI 
tool that allows for headless builds.  CI is a plus.

>>src/
>>   main/
>>       java/
>>           org/apache/felix/...
>>       resources/
>>   test/
>>       java/
>>           org/apache/felix/...
>>       resources/
>>    
>>
>
>Well, I am not totally against this structure, but it does somewhat suck 
>for people like me who still regularly use the command line to keep 
>making our paths deeper and deeper.
>  
>

I'm all about the command line too Richard.  The pain of these extra 
directories is emeliorated by tab completion, pushd, and popd. 

Side note: No offense to anyone but I don't trust IDEs since they dumb 
things down.  I can't stand it when tools obscure simple tasks to 
accomodate challenged users while creating havoc for those that know 
what they're doing. I cannot count the number of times some IDE plugin 
has screwed up my SVN working directory or messed up an ant/maven 
descriptor. Is it getting better and better every day? Yes for sure it 
is but we cannot *unfortunately* give up on the more tedious command line. 

Alex