Trond Ulseth's Blog - Eclipse

File Explorer issues in CFEclipse soon history?

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 09:25:00 -0600

I have the Trac page with the File Explorer issue in CFEclipse automatically opening in one of the tabs when I open my browser. Until recently nothing was there except the bug report itself. But now it seems something is happening. Someone with the username burnsra has posted a fix, so now I guess we'll just have to wait for the fix to make it into a upgrade. Have a look at the Trac page here.

While waiting for the File Explorer to be fixed in CFEclipse

Fri, 24 Aug 2007 08:10:00 -0600

It's been a while since I made the transition to CFEclipse as my full-time CF coding tool. However, even after Mark's heroic efforts after me bugging him the FTP functionality in the File Explorer left a little to be desired. This I could live with though. But now that the File Explorer itself has stopped working, so I can no longer open any local files that are not part of a project, that is worse. We have a "zillion" clients in work and to create a project to fix or update small things is not something I want to do. But I came up with a temporary work-around: Created a project called "temp" and pointet it to wherever. For each location on your computer or (as in my case) the local network, right click on the project and choose "New > Folder". Name the folder something like "Our smaller clients" or whatever suits the location you are interested in. Then click the "Advanced" button on the bottom and check the "Link to folder in the file system" check box, and browse to the directory you need. This way you can still have access to all the local files you need without opening a new project each time. - - - ps - you can keep an eye at the situation with the File Explorer at http://trac.cfeclipse.org/cfeclipse/ticket/332 pss - Mark you're still my hero, and well deserve the break you've taken of from CFEclipse. However, when you get back to it, and wonder where to start of, you know where my vote is ;)

A couple of "advanced" ANT (in Eclipse) questions

Thu, 02 Aug 2007 08:35:00 -0600

I started with ANT today. I see a huge potential in it. However I have now used the whole day trying to get two tings to work - and simply can't find the answer. I hope some ANT experts will take the time to answer the following questions: 1. Can I create a new Eclipse project with a ANT build? If so, how? 2. I get an error trying to create a database for my project with the following code:






		
CREATE DATABASE idlmedia02_${var.port}

The error: CREATE DATABASE statement not allowed within multi-statement transaction. Is there a way to use CREATE DATABASE statements from within ANT? As always when I ask for help - I would be really thankful to anybody who can shed light on these subjects.

Eclipse: I need help with the File Explorer View

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 06:53:00 -0600

I have no clue why, but all of a sudden browsing the Local Filesystem in the File Explorer View stopped working. I had hoped this would be corrected when I upgraded to Eclipse 3.3 today, but the problem is the same, even though I made a clean new install of Eclipse. See bellow to see how it looks when I try to browse my c: directory. If someone has any idea on how I can fix this I would be most grateful.

Aptana with AIR support

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 06:10:00 -0600

I decided to upgrade to version 3.3 of Eclipse today. I went for a clean install, and then add the plugins I use. So after installing CFEclipse first (of course), I went on over to the Aptana website to get the Aptana plugin (which I mainly use for CSS), and there on the front page they announce that Aptana now supports AIR. I've not checked it out my self yet. Actually I took the time to write this post even before downloading the Aptana plugin. So go check it out your self at: http://www.aptana.org/air/.

Subclipse is awesome, and not difficult

Thu, 29 Mar 2007 02:28:00 -0600

I'm not a very advanced user of SVN, and up until now I've used TortoiseSVN as the client of my choice. However being that I now have a mac at home I needed to find a SVN client for OSX. However I could not find anything that looked as easy to use as Tortoise. I've been using (CF)Eclipse for quite a while, but for some reason I always thought that Subclipse is a advanced/difficult SVN client. However, realizing that I should probably learn it I decided to go ahead and (try to) use that on the mac. To make it short: It's awesome. It's every bit as easy to use as Tortoise, and the fact that you create a new Eclipse project as part of setting up your local working copy is one of those things that really makes it worth while. I've just scratched the surface of Subclipse yet, but it is the SVN client of choice for me from now on - yes, even on Windows machines. Some of you might be thinking something along the lines of "Instead of just going on about how easy and great it is - why can't he tell us how to use it?". Well my friends, I see no reason to, because there is already a VERY GOOD explanation available, and which is the one I used to get started. It's written by Aaron West and can be found at his blog. So Aaron, if you ever read this, Thanx a lot mate!

Man of the Month: Mark Drew

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 03:11:00 -0600

I hereby declare Mark Drew winner of the Man of the Month award. The work Mark does with CFEclipse is nothing short of amazing. I think his attention to the needs and wishes of the community by far exceeds what most commercial enterprises do. So Mark, as you know I don't drink (alcohol that is), but never the less I raise my virtual glass of Jack Daniels in praise of you and the work you do with CFEclipse. I encourage all that reads this and who are using CFEclipse to leave a comment raising your virtual glass as well!

CFEclipse and (missing) BOM marks

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:53:00 -0600

Most of the websites I work on has Norwegian as the main or only language. To make sure Norwegian letters (æ,ø and å) looks good in web browsers we have to use UTF-8 as page encoding, and also insert a BOM mark. In Dreamweaver this is really simple to do, and I've set it to automatically use UTF-8 and include BOM mark on every new page I create. In Eclipse/CFEclipse however there seems to be no choice for adding BOM marks in your pages. After a while of desperate Googling (this would be crucial if I'm to use CFEclipse as my editor) I came upon a workaround that seems to be working. Not surprisingly the solution was proposed by Paul Hastings. The solution was found here, where Paul says "each of our coldfusion pages starts with: <cfprocessingdirective pageencoding="utf-8">" So now I added ...

... to one of the pages containing Norwegian letters and it seems to work. Now I hate the idea of having to add this to all pages we create, but if Paul Hastings is doing it, then it is probably not a bad idea anyway....

CFEclipse - weird snip problem

Fri, 15 Dec 2006 10:39:00 -0600

Ok - once again I have decided to try and make the switch over to CFEclipse as my main coding editor, but it's not making it easy. I'll try and be tough and fight trough whatever obstacle I meet (at least until a certain level). I will however need to ask for some advice/assistance now and then, so here goes question number one: I'm trying to create a new snip. I enter idlheader as both Snippet name, Trigger text and Snippet description, and then I put in a block of code as Snippet starting block. And somehow the block of code gets erased and the Snippet description gets changed to "Invalid byte 2 of 3-byte UTF-8 sequence." If i change the code block with something like "hahaha" it works, but pasting in my code it gets weird on me again. Anyone have any idea what can cause this problem? Here's the code I try to enter:














	
	#application.config.general.sitetitle# ο #attributes.pageTitle#

(It's a replacement for the standard dmHeader that comes with FarCry, should you wonder). UPDATE: When I copied and pasted the code from this blog post it worked. However it failed when I tried to copy it in from a open .cfm file in Eclipse, and the same from Dreamweaver and from Notepad.

Eclipse

Mon, 09 May 2005 12:29:00 -0600

I don't remember quite when it was, maybe a year ago, I decided to check out CFEclipse. However, at the time I would compare it directly to Dreamweaver, and I found too many features missing from CFEclipse that I use daily in DW, and so did not bother to check it out further.

However certain circumstances recently made me install Eclipse and give it a new go:

The xml workgroup I'm participating in have started working with DocBook, and I wanted to check out the Vex editor plug-in.
There's been a lot of praise of CFEclipse in numerous blogs the last year.
I have decided that I will start learning Java (I've told my self that for a long time), but now I'm really going to do it (now that I've said it in public I'm kind of obliged). And since Eclipse also is a Java development tool, it was a natural choice. Watch out for a series of "Java for Newbies" posts as I go along.

The framework

So, now that I've installed it and used it for a while, What do I think of it? The answer is that I dig it. Any negative comments I might have, has to do with some of the plug-ins and not the Eclipse framework itself. The update feature, the project management, the incredible flexible layout functionality the ease of installing new plug-ins, in short everything with the Eclipse framework itself is just great.

The plug-ins

I started out with three plug-ins. The earlier mentioned Vex and CFEclipse (of course), and the XMLBuddy plug-in (after advice from my friend Jared).

I immediately found that the CFEclipse/XMLBuddy combination is KILLER when it comes to mach-ii development. XMLBuddy easily replaces XMLMarker which I've been using for xml config files from before. And for coding cfc's (the model portion of a mach-ii application) I already feel more comfortable than in DW (and I've been a DW user and fan for a LONG time). If now the Vex plug-in was any good I would be able to code and write my mach-ii tutorials within the Eclipse environment. Sadly I have to say that while not bad, the Vex plug-in can't compete with the freestanding XML Editor from XMLmind for authoring DocBook documents.

I've later also installed the SQLExplorer plug-in and the Eclipse WTP (Web Tools Platform). The SQLExplorer I've not been able to connect to my DB yet (due to my own stupidity maybe), so I can't say much about it yet (except that it is a bit hard to connect to your DB - if you are not smarter than me that is).

As for the WTP I found the CSS capabilities to be pretty good (not as good as in DW still), and combined with the browser view (I always have my local development projects mapped under localhost) I almost feel that it in time Eclipse can replace DW as web site/application layout/design tool. The other features of WTP I've not played around with yet.

As for the future I've already bookmarked about 30 plug-ins that I will test when time allows. The majority of these deal with XML, UML or DB interaction. One sure winners is the Poseidon UML plug-in, and I am also excited to see if the Clay DB modelling plug-in can replace DBDesigner 4.

I'll blog back when I have more to tell. If you have suggestions for plug-ins or good advice on the use of Eclipse please leave a comment.