Getting Ready for Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo): What’s New?

Posted by Dionysios G. Synodinos on Jun 10, 2009

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Eclipse Galileo

With the announcement of  Release Candidate 3,  it’s a couple of weeks until Eclipse 3.5 code named “Galileo” will reach GA status. This new release of the popular Java development environment includes several new features and improvements over its previous version.

The new features include:

Platform and UI

• Solaris x86 has joined the lineup of supported configuration
• The Install New Software wizard now supports auto-complete in the Work with:combo
• A new intro theme called "Slate" has been added
• Switching between open editors and multiple editor pages has been streamlined.
• You can now safely skip the history cleanup step for a faster shutdown
• For general prompts and dialogs regarding editors, or the current Workbench window, sheets are now used on Mac Cocoa
• Applications can now programmatically select portrait or landscape mode when printing, or when opening a PrintDialog.
• The Eclipse rich client platform now includes an implementation of OSGi declarative services (DS)
• You can now pin the Properties view to a given selection
• A new preference page supports managing the startup prompt to select a workspace
• The About Dialog now provides a mechanism for plug-ins to contribute installation pages to the platform about dialog
• The Install New Software wizard will now open immediately without waiting to connect to any update sites
• Double-click on the vertical folding line now collapses the folding region
• There are several enhancements to the Compare Editor
• You can now quickly switch between suspended threads in the Debug view
• Support for Cocoa and OpenGL on Cocoa
• Support has been added to the FileTransfer class to allow for copy/paste operations between the Explorer and the Nautilus file manager.
• Several Improvements on the Project Explorer
• Textual editors now support block (aka column or rectangular) selection mode
• You can now apply a patch directly in the Synchronize view
• Comparing Word document changes in Eclipse now uses the Word compare support to show you the changes as revisions

Equinox

• The Equinox DebugOptions API has been enhanced to support dynamic changes to option settings
• A new debug tracing API, org.eclipse.osgi.service.debug.DebugTrace, has been added to enhance and simply writing of debug trace messages
• The OSGi R4.2 Core Specification is adding a number of small API additions to the core Framework
• New Equinox concurrency API

Plug-in Development Environment

• There is a new new Target Platform State view
• You can now create and share a target definition composed of software from software sites
• The new Category Definition editor can be used to assign categories to features when exporting
• You can now view API changes relative to an API baseline
• View information about menus by invoking Plug-in Spy in menu introspection mode
• The OSGi Declarative Services (DS) tooling has been enhanced to support the latest version of the DS specification
• You can now initialize product definitions from OSGi launch configurations.
• There is a new target platform preference page
• Plug-in export now supports the creation of source bundles
• The declarative services tooling now supports the latest OSGi declarative services specification (1.1) update
• The JAR signing support in PDE has been expanded to include support for keypasses
• The target editor has been enhanced to support new features in target definitions
• API tools can now analyze use of system libraries and create problems when code accesses members that may not be present at runtime
• You can now launch JUnit Plug-in tests in a non-UI thread
• Eclipse Application launch configurations now support start levels and auto-start settings
• The Plug-in Registry view now supports browsing for OSGi services
• A new extension has been added to PDE/Build that enables users to fetch artifacts from p2 repositories
• API tooling now supports two restrictions on interfaces: @noimplement and @noextend. This allows an interface to be extended when it is not intended to be implemented directly
• You can now be alerted to breaking API changes even if you have incremented the major version of your plug-in
• PDE has enhanced bundle and feature export to install the resulting exported bundles/feature into the currently running workbench
• Supports exporting features, plug-ins and product with binary cycles
• PDE has added declarative services tooling to help author service component definitions

Java development tools

• The NLS string hover now has an Open in Properties File action
• In Callers mode, the Call Hierarchy now has an Expand With Constructors action in the context menu
• The Java compare editor now updates its structure while you are typing inside the editor
• There is a new toString() generator
• An Open Implementation hyperlink has been added for overridable methods, which directly opens the implementation
• Compiler compliance follows execution environment
• Debug view now offers a breadcrumb which shows the current active debug context
• The Runnable JAR File Export wizard can now also package the required libraries into the exported runnable JAR file or into a folder next to the JAR
• Content Assist can now propose the available constructors of a class when the completion happens in an allocation expression
• The compiler can now issue a warning if dead code is detected
• The path of a library, variable or container entry can now be anywhere relative to the project
• In the headers of Javadoc hovers and the Javadoc view, references to other types and members are now links
• The JUnit4 version shipped with Eclipse has been updated to 4.5
• 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 by default

The schedule for the complete Galileo Simultaneous Release project informs that there will be 2 more RC before the GA version which is scheduled for June 24^th.

You can download RC 3 for your platform or read more Eclipse related news right here on InfoQ.

Dionysios G. Synodinos is a Web Engineer and a freelance consultant, focusing on Web technologies

1. Back to top

   Automatically Fold Private Methods

   by Twice Tshwenyane

   Is there by any chance the option to configure Galileo to automatically fold private methods?

   Reply

2. Back to top

   even slower

   by Kenny MacLeod

   I was rather hoping to see something alongs the line of "performance improvements". But no.....

   Reply

3. Back to top

   Jaav Color Schemes

   by v b

   When will eclipse include an "easily configurable" light text/dark background theme. I can't be the only one hurting from the current dark on light text scheme and it's a pain to manually configure this.

   Reply

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