Preference import has another major issue. (which I had hoped back in the
days of Eclipse 3.0 would have solved).
Export / Import of preferences is an all or nothing proposition.
If you, as a developer, have a core set of preferences you want to set, but
are happy with the rest being at default, then you cannot simply import
just those preferences you care about.
If you hand edit the preferences export to only have what you care about,
start a fresh copy of eclipse, and import your preferences, you now have a
bad installation of eclipse. Time to start over.
At 2 companies I worked at, we implemented our own Preferences layer to
Eclipse just to work around how much of a PITA it was to maintain Eclipse
preferences.
(Many felt Eclipse Preferences were harder and more obtuse to maintain than
the MS Windows Registry)
We had the following layers, in order of how they were resolved, before
being applied...
0) Eclipse Default
1) Corporate Baseline
2) Project Baseline
3) Developer Specific
4) Project Mandated
5) Corporate / Legal Mandated
Layers 1 thru 5 were deltas (only those entries deemed important)
Layer 1, and 5 were obtained daily from a known set of URLs
Layer 2, and 4 were obtained from the project scm tree, and updated on each
checkout/pull
Layer 3 was obtained from the ${user.home}/.eclipseprefs/ tree
Each delta handled the not only the normal preferences, but also many of
the secondary preferences in delta form (like individual java formatter
settings)
On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 10:11 AM, David M Williams <
david_willi...@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> I just wanted to say "making import/export" easier I think is the better
> way to address complaints about "initial preferences" .... there is no way
> that "initial preferences" will ever satisfy everyone and as for myself, it
> is always the first action I take with a new installation or workspace (to
> import my own favorite preferences, carefully exported in date/time stamped
> files :). And, yes, sometimes its a bit cumbersome ... but ... I'm not sure
> how it could be easier ... though perhaps adding an obvious action on
> "welcome screen" to "import preferences from previous installation or
> workspace" would make some sense ... if someone was willing to do the work
> :)
>
> If initial preference of line numbers displayed or not is the most hated
> thing about Eclipse ... I'd say we're doing great! :) ... but I know that's
> not the only thing, and sure, we can always do better ... if someone is
> willing to do the work. :)
>
>
>
>
> From: Henrik <h...@protos.de>
> To: Cross project issues <cross-project-issues-dev@eclipse.org>,
> Date: 07/15/2013 12:47 PM
> Subject: [cross-project-issues-dev] Preferences (topic was touched
> in "Eclipse smells kind of dead" thread)
> Sent by: cross-project-issues-dev-boun...@eclipse.org
> ------------------------------
>
>
>
> Hi all,
>
> I know that preferences can be imported/exported.
> Yet I find it a bit cumbersome to care about that every time I create a
> new workspace.
>
> Wouldn't it make sense to have preferences arranged in several layers
> similar to git: system/user/workspace?
>
> Also I could imagine to offer a web page with collections of preference
> settings.
> They could be ordered in categories (maybe aligned to the packaged Eclipse
> installations).
> And we could offer a possibility for users to cast their vote to be able
> to rank the settings.
>
> -Henrik
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>
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