DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE
Dec. 14th, 2006 09:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I should start an Eclipse UI Rant blog. I am *continually* finding serious issues with this IDE that are so... *braindead* that I wonder how the hell it got the rep it has for being so good. Seriously. It's like they took off sprinting before they could crawl, so it's got all these whiz-bang features (some of which are great functionality - if you can either find or use them...), but INCREDIBLY basic stuff is either borked or just plain missing. Fer instance, the two I ran into tonight. If anyone has a suggestion for these very trivial things, I'd appreciate it. "Install Mylar!" is not an answer, just to make that clear. If I wanted to learn a new UI tonight (because each plug-in and feature seems to bring it's own *special* uniqueness to the table) for such simple things, I wouldn't have a deadline in the morning that I need to meet.
1) Package Explorer. Filters. Search. WTF? I have a massive project I need to find all the tests in. Filenames are *not* of the form TestFoo.java or FooTest.java. They are instead inside folders named 'test'. (Don't look at me, I didn't write the damned things.) They are nested anywhere from 6-11 layers deep. There are many such folders. I would like to find them.
- Filters are subtractive *only*. I can remove unknown cruft from a list, but it can't be used, that I can see, to find known items. There is no way to add a 'not' operator to the search string to get it to filter out everything not conforming to the string. Regex? What's that? We'll just fake it! Bollocks. If this *is* using regex, it's not a format I'm familiar with.
- Search (Files) does positive hits... but it apparently won't search folder names, just files. I'm sorry, but what the fuck? I can't search folder names?
While we're on this, why, oh WHY does filtering occur within the Package Explorer, but Search pop up it's own handy dandy pane? They both end up with tree views, they both show results from a search (filter == subtractive search)... why the two interfaces? So close guys... so close.
The combination of the above two means that it is almost impossible to search for known names of folders easily. This can't be right. Point me to what I'm missing, please...
Update: `find . -name \*[T,t]est\* | sort > tests` in the terminal did the trick *so* easily... now if there were just some way to get that info into the Bookmarks...
2) Bookmarks. See above scenario. Now that I'm stuck (apparently) manually searching for the folders, I'd like to tag them as bookmarks so I can get back to them quickly. Easy, right? Basic functionality in any IDE, right? Not so fast there, buckaroo...
I finally found where the hell they were buried. (BTW, the Help system says to: Open the Resources Perspective to allow the Bookmarks view to appear in the Window -> Show Views submenu. Or, you could Window -> Show View -> Other and then look under General from any perspective...) I can bookmark a file. I can bookmark a specific line *within* a file. I cannot bookmark a folder. Again, W. T. F? Why is there this insistence on treating some disk-based resources differently? Hell, why is there an insistence on making two classes of visual elements in the underlying model? Resources... visual element... bookmarkable, right? Nope. Again, it seems you guys missed it by *this* much.
Someone throw me some waterwings before this boat anchor takes me down.
1) Package Explorer. Filters. Search. WTF? I have a massive project I need to find all the tests in. Filenames are *not* of the form TestFoo.java or FooTest.java. They are instead inside folders named 'test'. (Don't look at me, I didn't write the damned things.) They are nested anywhere from 6-11 layers deep. There are many such folders. I would like to find them.
- Filters are subtractive *only*. I can remove unknown cruft from a list, but it can't be used, that I can see, to find known items. There is no way to add a 'not' operator to the search string to get it to filter out everything not conforming to the string. Regex? What's that? We'll just fake it! Bollocks. If this *is* using regex, it's not a format I'm familiar with.
- Search (Files) does positive hits... but it apparently won't search folder names, just files. I'm sorry, but what the fuck? I can't search folder names?
While we're on this, why, oh WHY does filtering occur within the Package Explorer, but Search pop up it's own handy dandy pane? They both end up with tree views, they both show results from a search (filter == subtractive search)... why the two interfaces? So close guys... so close.
The combination of the above two means that it is almost impossible to search for known names of folders easily. This can't be right. Point me to what I'm missing, please...
Update: `find . -name \*[T,t]est\* | sort > tests` in the terminal did the trick *so* easily... now if there were just some way to get that info into the Bookmarks...
2) Bookmarks. See above scenario. Now that I'm stuck (apparently) manually searching for the folders, I'd like to tag them as bookmarks so I can get back to them quickly. Easy, right? Basic functionality in any IDE, right? Not so fast there, buckaroo...
I finally found where the hell they were buried. (BTW, the Help system says to: Open the Resources Perspective to allow the Bookmarks view to appear in the Window -> Show Views submenu. Or, you could Window -> Show View -> Other and then look under General from any perspective...) I can bookmark a file. I can bookmark a specific line *within* a file. I cannot bookmark a folder. Again, W. T. F? Why is there this insistence on treating some disk-based resources differently? Hell, why is there an insistence on making two classes of visual elements in the underlying model? Resources... visual element... bookmarkable, right? Nope. Again, it seems you guys missed it by *this* much.
Someone throw me some waterwings before this boat anchor takes me down.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-12-20 05:59 am (UTC)I need to keep better track of these issues, to be honest. Little things keep biting me like...
In the Package Explorer, it's a tree of disclosure triangles. Open waaaaaay down into a tree to find what you need. Decide you'd like a higher-level view for a moment. Close the top triangle only. Now open it again. Voila! It lost all the state below that, and you get play find-the-file all over again. Annoying. Lesson learned: never close anything.
Similarly, also in PE, because things get very deeply nested, you have to scroll the pane to the right. (Or resize it so it takes up most of your workspace, but now why not just make it a damned window, you know?) Start traversing down, use the keyboard because it's faster than the mouse, and *snap* the scrollbar goes back to the left. Scroll right, click on the next triangle, and *snap* there goes the damned scrollbar again, hiding what you just told it you want to look at. Annoying. Lesson learned: you have to manually manage your views... continuously.
It's little crap like this that makes me feel like I'm fighting with it every step of the way.