Java News from Wednesday, February 4, 2009

The Eclipse Project has posted the fifth milestone of Eclipse 3.5 Galileo, their open integrated development environment for Java. Version 3.5 adds numerous small new features though overall it's beginngin to look like more and more of a configuration nightmare. At some point Eclipse, desperately needs a user interface overhaul. Adding new switches for every conceivable customization is not a scalable approach in the long term. Enabling users to "Customize menus and toolbars" is not a substitute for an organized, logical menu structure on first launch. In any case, new features since 3.4 include:

• Mac OS X Cocoa support for SWT
• Links in StyledText
• Block selection mode in text editors
• Many OSGI improvements
• Constructor completion
• Improved Java-to-JavaScript and vice versa in the SWT Browser widget
• New caret listener
• The Java code formatter can preserve user line breaks by not joining lines in code or comments.
• Links in Javadoc headers
• Various bundled libraries are upgraded including JUnit 4.5, Jetty 6.1, and ICU4J.
• Cairo on AIX
• Apply patch in the Synchronize view
• The Javadoc view and hovers now support the {@inheritDoc} tag and add links to overridden methods
• Comparing identical values is now detected by the compiler and reported as a warning.

Nice enough, but what I really want from Eclipse right now is the ability to load and refactor tens of thousands of classes in one project.