CFEclipse - What do you want?
October 20, 2005 · 69 Comments
Folks at MAX saw Damon Cooper demo RDS support in Eclipse - the most requested feature for the CFEclipse project. I will be working with the CFEclipse team over the next few weeks to help them put together a roadmap and release schedule so hopefully we will soon be able to say when you might expect RDS support in a CFEclipse build.
What I'd like to hear about are other things you'd like to see in CFEclipse. Not the small, niggling little bug fixes - there's a good process in place for managing those (the bug tracker on Tigris). What I want to hear about are the bigger concerns, the futures. What could CFEclipse do to make your life as a developer easier? How can CFEclipse help you write better code?
I'll be posting some of my thoughts over the next few weeks in this new cfeclipse category - stay tuned!
Tags: cfeclipse · coldfusion
69 responses so far ↓
1 tony of the weeg clan // Oct 20, 2005 at 5:45 PM
thanks!
tony
2 tony of the weeg clan // Oct 20, 2005 at 5:48 PM
3 tony of the weeg clan // Oct 20, 2005 at 6:00 PM
thanks!
4 Dave Ross // Oct 20, 2005 at 6:30 PM
Pie-in-the-sky is an accompanying modeling tool that supports roundtrip engineering of CFCs (built on EMF perhaps?)
5 Sean Corfield // Oct 20, 2005 at 6:58 PM
6 tony of the weeg clan // Oct 20, 2005 at 7:05 PM
homesite also has word wrap, right?
or is code collapse something else?
7 Sean Corfield // Oct 20, 2005 at 7:12 PM
Eclipse itself makes it hard to implement both at the same time.
8 tony of the weeg clan // Oct 20, 2005 at 7:14 PM
ok, well. ill still wish for it.
maybe someone out there can figure out a way to make it happen. maybe not. like you said its been hashed out on the lists in great detail and if they could they would, im sure.
hasta
9 barry.b // Oct 20, 2005 at 7:18 PM
Sean,
are you after "big ticket features" or annoying niggly things and buggy behavour that prevent people from moving over?
for mine, it's the little stuff that's killing the idea of me using Eclipse. I have tried but I just get more go using Homesite, notepad + windows explorer (for CVS). CFEclipse just gets in the way of my workflow.
A co-worker beside me is using cfeclipse but he's willing to accept the compromises that I'm not and his evangilism of features isn't a big deal in comparison....
just my 2c
10 Doug Hughes // Oct 20, 2005 at 7:47 PM
Also, I'd love for the arguments accepted by a method to show when I type "(" and "," as I'm writing out the method call.. I'm sure you know what I mean. :)
Couldn't something like this be done by, if nothing else, parsing the CFC manually? Or using RDS somehow or other?
Frankly, this one feature would be killer for me.
11 Gareth Edwards // Oct 20, 2005 at 7:48 PM
1. Cfimport / Custom tag introspection. The ability for the page to know what custom tags an import tag has just imported and details of the attributes inside without having to write custom xml files.
2. UML designer / CFC/Class/Function/Property Stub Creator.
3. CFC / Function Introspection
4. Maybe make the Navigator tree for cfc's like the java class navigator?
I'm sure I've got a couple of other things I think would be handy, but I cant think of them right now.
12 Daniel D // Oct 20, 2005 at 7:54 PM
Moving methods up and down the inheritance tree. Creating new methods from selected code. Gereration of getter and setters and replacing existing references to those variables with the new getter and setters. These are some of the refactoring items that could be very usefull for CFeclipse. Some of the not simple to do because of the typelessness of CF.
CFC and webservice drag and drop functionality similar to what is available in dreamweaver would also be nice.
One of the big features that I miss is MS SCCapi integration. I know there is VS, CVS, SVN support but at work we use a revesion control that is not currently support by eclipse. But does support the MS SCC api. I would love to see this supported in CFeclipse or as an eclipse plugin.
13 Sean Corfield // Oct 20, 2005 at 8:04 PM
Gareth, Doug, good feedback too.
Barry, I'm mostly after big ticket stuff but if "little stuff" is stopping you from using CFEclipse, I'd like to hear the specifics of that too.
14 Dave Ross // Oct 20, 2005 at 8:38 PM
15 Rob Munn // Oct 20, 2005 at 9:26 PM
Please also add the right click "Edit Tag" feature of Homesite+ that pops up the dialog box with the tag attributes. That is a very handy feature.
I agree about the CFC stuff. It would be very cool to make CFC introspection function like Java class introspection in Eclipse.
16 rich // Oct 20, 2005 at 9:44 PM
17 Sean Corfield // Oct 20, 2005 at 10:19 PM
18 rich // Oct 20, 2005 at 10:24 PM
This is extremely useful when working in a multiserver (dev/qa/uat/production) environment.
Editing files directly on the server via RDS, OTOH, is something I rarely use.
19 Rob Munn // Oct 20, 2005 at 10:34 PM
Overall, though, the deployment stuff is very cool. It takes advantage of the WSH integration, Sean. It is more or less a wizard that builds a .js file to copy your code, then executes the script. It allows you to save/modify your script and therefore do stuff like replace source files/folders for particular destinations (so you can if needed have your config files for multiple servers deployed through a single script, for instance).
All the more reason for the BSF integration.
20 Tero Pikala // Oct 20, 2005 at 10:50 PM
Using Ant would give you more control how to deploy code but basic deployment script is really easy to do.
21 Sean Corfield // Oct 20, 2005 at 11:00 PM
22 Jordan Clark // Oct 20, 2005 at 11:38 PM
Homesite was way ahead of its time by using an xml language to create GUI (it's amazing that only now is mxml & xamal technology catching up). But it is such an great feature because it makes it super easy to code, and if you're compelled enough you can even customize them or make your own.
Maybe it would even be possible to translate Homesite VTM editors into some new xml dialect. This could be used to extend or replace the current cfeclipse system for hints / help / color coding.
I'd be willing to help.
Jordan
23 Rob Munn // Oct 21, 2005 at 12:05 AM
Ant is definitely what I would use if I were not already using Archive/Deploy.
24 Mark Drew // Oct 21, 2005 at 1:59 AM
A few answers to the issues that have propped up in the comments.
One of the main features I would like to see is introspection/compiling of cf code so that the errors you get are not from the syntax library but from CF actually telling you what is wrong. This could also provide "intellisense" for CFC's
Another would be debugging of code integrated into the IDE.
I wont mention word wrap .. its a sore issue. I dont need it myself but prefer the code folding.
In Reply to Rob Munn's post, he should try the snippets, I use them to insert my name, date, current file etc into documentation and other useful bits of code: see here for more details http://cybersonic.blogspot.com/2004/09/eclipse-and-cf-eclipse-shortcuts.html
RDS is already in the works and was shown at MAX I belive. I for one will be doing some work soon on it soon to integrate it into a per-project basis.
With regards to tag editors, there is un-implemented code to do this, the reson I havent implemented it is that it needs to be a "full feature" so that you can both insert and edit tags . Some tags have a huge number of attributes so we need to find a way to lay out these dialogs.
I would like to build a custom tag "add" dialog so that your tags can be added easily to the dictionary.
Other features I would like to implement include:
1) Integrated Help (in the works)
2) Logging/Monitoring integration
3) Debugging
4) CFC & Webservice lists (using RDS?)
Again, great to have you on board Sean!
25 Roger Lancefield // Oct 21, 2005 at 2:25 AM
- Ability to jump to first non-whitespace character in a line (I find the absence of this to be an A-List pain - and it's something that pretty much every other text-editor and IDE I've ever used can do)
- Highlight current tag (I find this sooo useful when updating/repurposing tag-based code)
- Split window view (indespensible when working with long mach-ii.xml files, long complex views, etc)
- The ability to insert a snippet simply by typing a key-combination, without needing to first insert some trigger text. Being required to do this prevents one from highlighting a block within the file and surrounding it with opening and closing snippet code (at least, by using the keyboard alone). I've got dozens of key combinations assigned to snippets in Homesite, and being able to insert them instantly without having to reach for the mouse enables me to rattle along at rapid pace.
- RDS would be very nice indeed, although if I had to choose, I'd rather have the above features as their absence slows me down and makes me feel that I'm less productive in CFEclipse than in Homesite.
- Oh yes (this one relatively trivial, but...), the ability to open folders in the file manager, snippet view, etc. with a double-click instead of needing to aim and fire at the tiny plus sign (is this a general Java issue?)
Apart form these things, I find CFEclipse and Eclipse in general to be pretty awsome. Heck, they even look great!
26 JediHomer // Oct 21, 2005 at 2:57 AM
Intellisense :)
Image tag / Flash Tag width/height generation - Or full attribute editting.
One thing I have missed from Homesite+ is the ability to see the control/non visible characters in a file.
Ive been using CFEclipse for nearly a year now and although at times it can slow down (esp. with all the other java apps running at the same time) I dont think I would go back to HomeSite+ now.
27 Sam Farmer // Oct 21, 2005 at 5:39 AM
First off some little things;
1. A better resource site; there are several good sites or blogs that cover how to use CFEclipse but it is crying out for a central resource. cfeclipse.org would be good for this.
2. 2 file explorer tabs (ala Homesite)
3. Word wrap, yup I've read all the comments about why it can't be done, etc but its the one thing I miss from Homesite (I also hardly ever use code collapse).
4. This would be awesome. CFC drag/drop. My dream would be I have a normal cf file open in the editor window, I can then browse through cfc's in another window, examine them similar to opening a cfc in the outline view, pick the function I want and drag it into my code with it formatted for all arguments, returns, etc.
Word wrap
28 Doug Hughes // Oct 21, 2005 at 6:15 AM
29 Damien // Oct 21, 2005 at 6:41 AM
SSH support in the file transfer manager would be great, we don't use no stinkin' FTP 'round these here parts.
Damien
30 rd // Oct 21, 2005 at 6:48 AM
- integrated help
- right click tag wizards
- global search and replace
- auto backup
- debugging like flex builder2 (I know cf isnt mxml but maybe something along those lines)
- add more/custom toolbars to the top
- color palette picker
- code sweep
- special characters view
31 rd // Oct 21, 2005 at 6:49 AM
- integrated help
- right click tag wizards
- global search and replace
- auto backup
- debugging like flex builder2 (I know cf isnt mxml but maybe something along those lines)
- add more/custom toolbars to the top
- color palette picker
- code sweep
- special characters view
32 Damien // Oct 21, 2005 at 6:51 AM
Damien
33 Johnathan Gifford // Oct 21, 2005 at 6:57 AM
34 Chris Scott // Oct 21, 2005 at 7:03 AM
35 nik // Oct 21, 2005 at 7:20 AM
A cleaner perspective - FB2 did a great job of moving everything I don't need out of the way. I'd like to see this cleaned up a little bit in CFE.
Some kind of built in gateway event triggering/monitoring would be intresting. For example, instead of me leaving my editor to go to that little cell phone app to type something in and send it to the gateway just to test the code I was just looking at, maybe something like the popular componentInvoker thats floating around, but for gateways. I guess it's hard to explain exactly - but hopefully you catch my drift.
36 Justice // Oct 21, 2005 at 8:36 AM
37 Jordan Clark // Oct 21, 2005 at 8:40 AM
I wonder why Macromedia won't just give up trying to force DW down the throats of hand coders, they've been trying for over 2 years now.
Homesite won't be updated, so instead they should make a commitment in a BIG way to make the ColdFusion tools developers want for Eclipse. They should commit a bunch of java developers full time to contribute to CFEclipse project until they create a commercial quality, feature rich plugin before ColdFusion market share slips even further.
RAD needs a world class IDE, Macromedia's job is half complete with the Eclipse platform.
38 Paul Roe // Oct 21, 2005 at 9:35 AM
The file navigator needs to pull in drive names not just drive letters, when I am working on a network with 20 drives I have no idea which drive letters are dev/prod/test/xyz etc.
When I have a file open I want to see the full path to the file somewhere!
The word wrap is a big issue for me as well, personally I'd rather have word wrap than code folding, maybe there could be a setting that allows you to use one of the features and disable the other?
The intellisense stuff would be great!
I would like to be able to set code completion to activate when I type </ just like the feature that was added to DW8
These features would be very nice!
39 john hodorowicz // Oct 21, 2005 at 9:51 AM
That would help me out a bunch.
40 Brandon Harper // Oct 21, 2005 at 9:56 AM
To reiterate many comments which have already been stated:
- Intellisense or whatever it's correct moniker is for introspecting CFC methods, etc
- UML roundtrip engineering
- I would much rather have word wrap over code folding since I tend to clean-up code that has been commented out since it's already in source control if I need to revert-- maybe it could be an either/or option?
- One thing I do like about Dreamweaver.. you can right click on a tag and you get the pop-up box with all of that tags attributes, etc. Helpful for those tags you don't use very often and can't remember all of the attributes for.
Some things I haven't seen:
- Some sort of code checker/scanner which can look for bad coding practices, code which is not thread safe, etc. You could edit options for it to do things such as report attributes which were missing such as hints or data types, etc... it would also be able to warn you about places where you're using platform specific code.
- A way to quickly generate test stubs for CFC's by introspecting them, and maybe even some sort of JUnit or cfcUnit integration?
- A total "what if" thing... a way to manage all JRun J2EE instances on a given subnet.. or along the same lines, at least a way to integrate instance restarts into Ant?
- Something that generates JavaDoc like documentation for CFC's (only less ugly) in an exportable format like html, rtf, etc.
- If UML engineering were implemented, it would be cool if you could generate stub controllers for the various frameworks, a config file for Coldspring, etc.
- A way to run an instance of CF inside of Eclipse for debugging, testing, etc.
41 Roger Lancefield // Oct 21, 2005 at 10:19 AM
- Full path to current file displayed within the application title bar
- The ability to hide the toolbar to maximise screen real estate (it's kind of a waste having buttons on the screen that I never use)
42 Qasim Rasheed // Oct 21, 2005 at 11:47 AM
Daniel:
There is a plugin for MS Sourcesafe which is quite useful and I have been using it at my work for the past several months.
43 Sean Corfield // Oct 21, 2005 at 11:55 AM
Could folks who are asking for "better" search / replace explain what they are looking for here?
44 Brandon Harper // Oct 21, 2005 at 11:56 AM
- A way to easily create mutators & accessors by highlighting words which have line breaks between them, and/or by highlighting a bunch of <cfset>'s the same way that you can do in Java in Eclipse.
45 Qasim Rasheed // Oct 21, 2005 at 12:02 PM
Change method signature.
Renaming a method should also update all it reference in the current project.
Move method up or down the inheritance hierarchy.
46 Paul Roe // Oct 21, 2005 at 12:20 PM
But because that's kind of dodging your question I'll try to list it out.
I have to go to two different windows to do search and replace on a single file vs multiple files. I can't do search and replace over a selection. I cant set the scope of the search/replace to a single folder or subtree of folders. When i get search results back it's only broken down by file and number of occurences, where as I would love to see each instance show up in the search results tree. Being able to view old searches in my search results view at the same time as a current search.
Not to forget overall user interface improvements.
47 Daniel D. // Oct 21, 2005 at 12:23 PM
48 Sean Corfield // Oct 21, 2005 at 12:38 PM
One thing to point out is that some of the requests in this thread are for changes to core Eclipse functionality, not just CFEclipse, so those would, obviously, be harder to implement. And, yes, I know that the line between Eclipse and CFEclipse isn't always very clear!
Keep the suggestions coming - this is all very valuable feedback!
49 Bob Jones // Oct 21, 2005 at 12:43 PM
As a CFEclipse user I was very excited to hear Macromedia support the project. So far, though, their input seems to be a crappy web site (cfeclipse.org) and talk of RDS. Thats piss poor.
So, now, you are fully onboard I agree with most of the ideas above but most important is that CFEclipse needs to be POLISHED; an improved interface, better explainations of how to use the tool, etc. Make it something awesome. It currently is a very cool open source project but it is not of the quality that should be associated with the name Macromedia. (And that is not a slight on anyone who has worked on the project).
50 Paul Roe // Oct 21, 2005 at 1:19 PM
It does speak to how bad the interface is if you can tell me that I can do all of those things with eclipse and I can't figure out how to do them, when I have been using the tool for 7 months.
51 Michael Sewell // Oct 21, 2005 at 1:21 PM
- Code completion that works correctly
- FTP functionality (still have to go back to DW for this)
- Better documentation on how to use the tool, I often struggle to find how to do something in the editor.
- CFC Introspection (always worth repeating)
- CTL+SHIFT+Z is ReDo, not color pallet
All for now
52 Lola // Oct 21, 2005 at 3:39 PM
53 tony of the weeg clan // Oct 21, 2005 at 4:19 PM
Homesite 6 (with all the cool things about eclipse, all the cool things about dreamweaver, and a newer looking interface)
:) why not just make Homesite all that much better, and just focus there?
why the cfeclipse adoption?
just wondering.
54 Sean Corfield // Oct 21, 2005 at 4:43 PM
55 tony of the weeg clan // Oct 21, 2005 at 5:32 PM
and all the accoutrements that come with cfeclipse and the open sourceness and cross platformness that abounds!
tw
56 Bill Rawlinson // Oct 21, 2005 at 9:30 PM
1. word wrap
2. columnar select
Now, I know the issues with both. I have spoken with Spike about it before - but it doesn't change the fact that I would love to see them in CFEclipse.
In Editplus I can't do columnar select if word wrap is on. Now, I have no real idea of how the buffers work in Eclipse (or Editplus for that matter) however, it seems like the Editplus approach might be viable for Eclipse.
Code Folding, Wordwrap, and Columnar Select would be mutually exclusive. Or, in simpler terms, you could only use one of the features at a time.
The only other thing I would like in Eclipse (and this has nothing to do with CFEclipse) is for it to start faster, be more responsive, and generally not hog as many resources :O)
I find the code folding invaluable when dealing with larger CFCs and the Method Outline pane is really handy.
Oh, the parser shouldn't require a closing tag for everything. For instance if I have cfmodule and don't have a closing cfmodule or a / then the parser doesn't work so well and I don't get all of the methods in the method outline pane.
I don't remember if this was fixed but ignore case of cftags. When my company first started using CF back in cf4.7 we put all of the CF tags in UPPERCASE and all html in lowercase so that you could distinguish between the two quickly upon opening a file. However, when I first started using CFECLIPSE it didn't parse all caps CF tags.. Again, this might be fixed - I don't remember sorry.
57 Nelson Winters // Oct 22, 2005 at 4:53 AM
58 Bill Rawlinson // Oct 22, 2005 at 7:41 AM
59 Brandon Harper // Oct 23, 2005 at 8:54 AM
http://www.phpeclipse.de/
60 Geoff Pennington // Oct 24, 2005 at 5:44 PM
61 Mark W. Breneman // Oct 25, 2005 at 9:04 AM
-The ability to insert a snippet simply by typing a key-combination, without needing to first insert some trigger text. Major Peeve of mine.
-Intellisense. Hey maybe you guys can barrow from Flex Builder. This is very similar to what was shown at the sneak peek for FB @ MAX.
-Code Formatting, an automated way to correctly tab your code blocks. Something like the eclipse plugin called HTML Tidy but more CF friendly.
-Columnar select
- right click tag wizards
-Integrated Server error log reader with line column finder. It would be neat to have a CFMX error log reader with the option of opening file with error and go to the line / column with error. Probably a pipe dream.
I must be living under a rock, eclipse's Find and replace is the most powerful I have ever seen. I would not make any major changes to it. The only improvement I can think of is the option to do a refresh of a project before a search to prevent search errors, due to new files being added to the project.
62 Sean Corfield // Oct 25, 2005 at 11:06 AM
http://www.mikenimer.com/eclipse/logviewer/index.cfm
63 Topper // Oct 25, 2005 at 2:34 PM
This is the ONLY feature preventing me from using Elipse for CF development. Its just too handy!
64 tony of the weeg clan // Oct 25, 2005 at 3:39 PM
:) tw
65 Mark W. Breneman // Oct 28, 2005 at 8:43 AM
66 Mark W. Breneman // Oct 28, 2005 at 8:56 AM
67 Tony Bianco // Nov 14, 2005 at 9:37 AM
68 Sean Corfield // Nov 14, 2005 at 4:07 PM
69 John Farrar // Nov 14, 2005 at 6:55 PM
Bottom line is more what would it take (deal makers) to get us into the product. You already have some of my notes... but to me the issue is what are the deal makers and breakers rather than whats on my wish list.
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