Eclipse 3.5 Galileo has been Released

On June 25th, 2009 Eclipse release its 3.5 codenamed Galileo.

I'm trying to explore this new stuff a bit, and try to experience what's new.

http://www.eclipse.org/galileo

My personal experience, I was always excited to see how fast Eclipse has been in incorporating features that was missing before since pre-Europa. Before Europa release, I hate it if I have to use it. But since the Europa, it has become my IDE of choice (also due to its licensing mode).

Today I downloaded the eclipse-jee-galileo-win32.exe file, as it is the most suitable for our team needs. If everything seems to be acceptable, we will soon moving our development environment here to make use of this new release.

What I am waiting for is to see how far the IAM has progressed. On Ganymede SR1, some of the link still isn't consistent yet.

The most notable change is in the application icon. Now it's no longer the shaded purple planet satellite with double white equatorial stripes. The icon changed color with less saturation, and there is a halo outside that looks like a gear.

Other notable change is in the way how Eclipse update its features as in OSGi components. This is one of the most confusing part of Eclipse IDE. Before Ganymede, you have to add your own update site, give the site a name and URL, then Eclipse will load components data. You must select the checkboxes. On Ganymede you don't have to specify a name, just the URL. On Galileo, now they separate between update of Eclipse and update of third party components.

Eclipse has notoriously been problematic in the updating components, where as the update on the Eclipse components could fail some others. You can't just update your Eclipse component right. Most of the time you need to reinstall your Eclipse and build yours from release, e.g. when updating from Ganymede to Ganymede SR1, it'd better safe your time to start from a clean fresh Ganymede JEE SR1 installer and re-add your custom components one by one, rather than taking the risk to update the Ganymede JEE release.

It seems that now Eclipse separates the update of Eclipse from other componets, now have "Check for Updates", and "Install New Software...".

I tried to use the Subversive, and it complains no JavaHL. Haven't had luck to find a way to add it. I tried to get Subclipse instead, and the update URL provided (http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.4.x) that was working still haven't supported Galileo.

I guess I have to wait some more before moving our development to the new version.

Fallback.

(I'm still exploring it now).